LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



Chap. 

Shelf 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






/ 



^o^' 



Reprint from PENN MONTHL Y, 
for April, i88o- 




c. 



^---^4/'. 






\J1^^J.,' OC<-uAa-yv^ '^-^ 



FITZ JOHN PORTER. 



HALF a ^ neration of men have gone to render an account of 
the deed done in the body, since a court-martial, convened 
in perfunctory compliance with the Articles of War, inflicted upon 
this officer an infamous punishment, too light if he was guilty, too 
heavy if he was innocent, of the heinous crime charged against him. 

Men held their breath when they saw an accomplished soldier 
of approved skill, tried courage, and established reputation, sent 
forth with the mark of Cain upon him, to become, as the tempor- 
arily successful conspirators hoped, " a fugitive and a vagabond in 
the earth." Earnest protests were made by old men who knew 
the blood he inherited, and by young men, bound to him by the 
mystic brotherhood of the camp — the instinctive affinity of man- 
hood — which so often outlives the ties of consanguinity. 

The time was not propitious for calm consideration. Blind ac- 
ceptance of current opinion was the shibboleth — a cheap, con- 
venient offering upon the altar of country — still current, despite the 
silent appeal from the graves of true men, who perished in battle, 
bivouac and hospital, their very names forgotten outside their 
homes, though ostentatiously paraded on tomb stones erected by 
a grateful country, that loyal contractors, who had avoided im- 
prudent exposure in war, might continue to thrive in peace. 

There were strains of " primeval savagery," in the blood con- 
tributed by theretofore divergent races, to the surging tide, which 
ebbs and flows with the pulsations of the American heart. Napo- 
leon had a few men shot, " pour encourager Ics autres." " The Lord 
tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," but his perverted creatures 
turn aside the airs of heaven from the nostrils of the panting brute, 
caught by the horns in the thicket, for sacrifice in atonement for 



iB 



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um 



L_415 



the sins of others. Vicarious siiRring commends itself to all but 
the sufferer. It has a peculiar charm for those who most ignore the 
precepts of its grand exemplar. Romans enjoyed it in the amphi- 
theatre, Spaniards at the bull-fight, Englishmen in so-called courts 
of justice. The mirror of Anglo-Saxon equity shows, beneath its 
brilliant surface, dark specks of Anglo-Saxon brutality. Macaulay 
in his over-colored portrait of the Puritans — by no means the worst 
front of British character — kept nearer exact truth than usual, in 
saying that they denounced bear-baiting, not for the pain inflicted 
upon the bears, but because of the pleasure it gave the people. 

Cowardice, rare there as here, is always found hand in hand 
with cruelty. They hunt in couples. 

Admiral Byng was shot — a court-martial the convenient instru- 
ment — that an administration might not be unseated. 

When the local rulers of Ireland, stimulated to frenzy in 1798, 
by their panic-stricken superiors, simplified their criminal code, 
cheapening blood, one of their first victims was William Orr, charged 
with administering the oath of the United Irishmen to a British 
soldier, sent to him by the agents of the government, for the pur- 
pose of taking that oath, and so qualifying himself as a witness. 
The oath was not, in itself, a hanging matter. The terrified officials 
would, to avoid the nightmare which infested the castle, have 
swallowed many such. It had been eagerly taken by more than 
a quarter of a million of men, in Ulster alone — Presbyterians de- 
manding equal rights for their Roman Catholic countryman. Orr, 
set apart for the gallows, was convicted and condemned. Four 
jurors voluntarily made oath that they had no recollection of as- 
senting to the verdict, and that if they had done so, it must have 
been when, stupified with whiskey, brought into the jury room 
by stealth, they were unable to express their dissent. This expo- 
sure of official machinery brought a reprieve. The affidavit of the 
witness, whose testimony procured conviction, that his conclusive 
proofs had been a " sequence and succession " of perjuries, in- 
duced further delay. In Great Britain those affidavits would have 
given pause. In Ireland it was not so. Examples were needed. 
The expense of a vexatious trial had been incurred, and loyal 
servants of the crown demanded compensation for wear and tear 
of conscience and temper. The law was not to be defrauded of 
its fore-ordamed victim, by the scruples of jurors, or the lapse of 



an ill-trained witness. The memory of Orr of Carrickfergus is en- 
shrined in the hearts of his countrymen, with that of other martyrs 
who, in their tender phrase, " suffered for the cause." The warm 
Irish heart traversed the infamous record, in the defiant words of a 
compatriot, who went unharmed far beyond Orr in the direction of 
treason. 

" Cord and axe and guillotine 
Make the sentence — not the sin." 

An officer of yeomanry played bosom friend to the brothers 
Sheares, fondling Henry's only child, that he might reach the 
father's life through the mother's heart. The knaves who furnished 
the evidence necessary to give conviction the color of justice, lived 
till near ninety, in idleness, on the avails of infamy. Neither was 
made a general in the British army. Neither was sent to a foreign 
court. 

When the crew of the Hermione overpowered her officers, and 
carried her into Gibraltar, then a Spanish port, the admiralty issued 
an order for the summary execution of any man found on board a 
national vessel, on proof that he had been one of her crew on that 
occasion. These men had been merciful. With their oppressors 
in their hands, they had abstained from retaliation. They knew 
their danger. They had no representation in parliament, and were 
too poor to fee advocates. " The fourth estate " did not exist. 
" The friend of the absent " could only reach the public through 
pamphlets, little read. Fraud or flight remained. Most of them 
died abroad. A few, stimulated by liquor, or want, re-entered the 
naval service. That service did not lack men. The press gang 
furnished enough, and troublesome fellows could be put out 
of the way, without loss to the service. A short shrift, the yard- 
arm, and a sudden submergence with a round shot, closed the ac- 
count for earth. British appetite palls even upon roast beef. The 
Hermione was heard from too often. A resolution of inquiry was 
adopted, and the report showed that more Hermoine's men had 
already been hanged than were on board when her crew rose. 
The graver mutiny of the Nore was dealt with differently. 

The emergencies of our civil war brought scape-goats into de- 
mand. Those who furnished the sinews of war must be amused. 
That patriotism, which Dr. Johnson defined as " the last refuge of a 
scoundrel," was too acute to disgust those who furnished men and 



fed them. Noah's nakedness was covered so often that Shems and 
Japhets were becoming perfect in the back step, and the cloak of 
charity threadbare, when peace reheved them from further duty. 

Major General John Pope, incomparably the finest melodramatic 
author and actor of the war, finessed well. He' showed his paces 
with the confident air and tricksy manoeuvres of that hero of the 
circus who always charms the juvenile heart. 

General Worth had originated the phrase, " head-quarters in 
the saddle " but it wilted under the chilling suggestion of a young 
officer, that he " had always considered the saddle, the proper place 
for a gentleman's hindquarters." Author and commentator were 
dead. General Pope appropriated the waif, and announced his in- 
tention of subsisting his army on the enemy, dispensing with bases 
of supply, lines of communication and other hindrances to earnest 
men requiring neither food nor sleep. He had read of the three 
hundred that lapped with the hand, and valued himself too highly 
to fear that the assistance so effective on that occasion, would be 
withheld from a Pope. Not putting his light under a bushel, or 
concealing it with a pitcher, he blew a sprightly prelude to Miriam's 
song of triumph and revealed to the eye of faith the falling walls of 
the Jericho of Jefferson Davis. 

" Thus far into the bowels of the land have we marched on with- 
out impediment," was the lullaby that soothed public expectation, 
till " a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of 
thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains," when 
General Pope was so occupied with resonant reports from the rear, 
as to have little leisure for pondering the report which his proper 
superiors on his changed front would expect at his hands. One 
promise was fulfilled. He had " established communication with 
the enemy" so thoroughly, that his head-quarters flag and papers, 
a vast amount of public property, and his clothes remained in 
their hands. When he gave his horse-tails to the wind, his 
vanishing head-quarters conveyed only his diminished self, his 
gorgeous uniform coat being held, for account of whom it might 
concern, by the confederate General Stuart. He knew the worth 
of " Atalanta's better part." Weary of hogskin resting on hard 
wood, and harder iron, " cabined, cribbed, confined, bound into 
saucy doubts and fears," he announced in special order No. oo, 
dated " Groveton, August 30th 1862" — his Hegira, — that "the 



general head-quarters will be somewhere on the Warrenton Turn- 
pike." That turnpike was well known for its facilities for rapid 
transit. Many middle-aged citizens, North and South, reflect, with 
more pleasure than pride, on the good time they made upon it, 
when they looked only for " one thing, forgetting those things 
which are behind, and reacTiing forth unto those which are before." 
The north-easterly exit was, for General Pope, the more cheerful. 
It led towards the flesh pots of Egypt, away from the wilderness 
and those extempore pyrotechnics which shed a baleful light on 
his misguided army. The dome of the Capitol was " as the 
shadow of a great rock in a weary land." 

The John Pope of Shakespeare, said at the close of such a day : 
** The better part of valor is discretion ; in the which better part I 
have saved my life." Our Falstaff used valor's better part without 
remark. 

He had scattered his orders broad-cast through the press. 
The popular mind was tickled by performances not in the bills. 
Some variations were startling, but the ambulatory General did 
not quail. Reduced to the level of ordinary humanity, by the 
loss of his coat, he had in reserve, perennial effloresence and a 
flowing well of elastic statement. His prompt action, under ad- 
verse circumstances, equalled that of Wellington at Waterloo. 
A triumphal march, the enemy in retreat, losing prisoners at a 
rate which must soon exhaust the containing power of his army, 
would have met public expectation, and laid a good foundation 
for history ; but the anxiety about Washington, which had repeat- 
edly caused such waste of blood, treasure, and strategic opportunity 
had made people so well acquainted with the adjacent portion 
of Virginia, as to embarrass him in fixing the route for a triumph. 
The stoppage of an army in march by the number and immobility 
of its prisoners had once served his purpose ; but the ready wit of 
President Lincoln had blown the ten thousand men reported taken 
on that occasion into thin air. 

General Pope gave the President all the facts which he did not 
prefer to withhold. He had been, in some sort, defeated, but it 
was not his fault. " The best laid plans o' men and mice gang 
aft agley." If his corps commanders and others had met his wishes, 
the war would have been closed. 



General Pope and his predecessor at Bull Run, would, by their 
respective exhibitions on that gratuitous Aceldama, have achieved 
distinction for themselves and peace for the country, if somebody 
had done them, in turn, the kindness to hold the big boy of the 
other side, till the fight was over. 

Whatever art was used in the selection of commanders for the 
Federal forces, must be sought in 

" Limbo large and broad, since called 

The Paradise of Fools." 

History presents no parallel but the caprice of Henry the Eighth 
in the choice of wives. Blondes and brunettes, Katharines and 
Annes, McDowells and Popes, failing to meet the fanciful expecta- 
tions of the Defender of the Faith, or of the American people, met 
the bowstring. 

" Here yawns the sack, and yonder rolls the sea." 

The transfer of Irvin McDowell to the line, was the first of a series 
of exhaustive experiments whereby our people were taught a great 
lesson at great cost. The army exchanged one of its best staff 
officers for one of its least efficient generals. Graduating credit- 
ably at the Military Academy, he entered the artillery, attaining 
the grade of First Lieutenant before he could secure the coveted 
staff appointment, was breveted Captain for " gallant and meritor- 
ious conduct in the battle of Buena Vista," while serving on the 
staff of General Wool, and Major on the staff in 1856. The ad- 
vantage of a year's travel on leave in Europe, his large acquaintance 
with volunteer troops, acquired while mustering them into service 
during the Mexican and Civil wars, his sonorous voice and impres- 
sive manner in administering the oath of allegiance, gave him pres- 
tige, which, decisively sustained in action, would have been in- 
valuable. 

This showy subaltern, overstepping the captaincy, not earned 
by service, and the several field grades, to the second rank in the 
army, became heir presumptive to the first. It would have been 
well for the country and for his reputation, if he had continued to 
nestle in safety under the shadow of the heroic figure of Winfield 
Scott. His preposterous promotion was due to his politic deference 
to the superannuated hero, who dearly loved a complaisant martinet. 
His exercise of power did not, in vigor or skill, correspond with 
his efforts to obtain it. The battle, arranged after many delays, 



for Tuesday, July i6th, the army of the Shenandoah being directed 
to amuse, until that day, the rebel forces in the Valley of Virginia, 
was awkwardly delivered, on Sunday, July 2ist, no intelligence 
being sent during the five precious days so wasted, to the co-oper- 
ating columns. Its commander had, a month before the battle, 
and repeatedly afterwards, unsuccessfully sought permission to 
march his army to Leesburg, that it might be available against 
either Johnston or Beauregard. That it was not so, was due to 
the earnest protest of General McDowell, as stated by himself un- 
der oath before the committee on the conduct of the war, with a 
brevity unlike his diffuse elaboration of minor points : " In reply 
to some suggestion once made about bringing Patterson over to 
Leesburg, I said if he went there Johnston might escape, and join 
Beauregard, and I was not in a condition to meet all their forces 
combined." 

On Saturday, July 20th, General Patterson telegraphed General 
Scott the fact of the departure of General Johnston, with a portion 
of his force, from Millwood on the afternoon of the i8th ; and that 
telegram was in Mr. Lincoln's hands more than twenty-four hours 
before the first shot was fired at Bull Run. An intimation from 
the President is tantamount to a command ; but the sagacious sug- 
gestion of Mr. Lincoln, enforced by the thoughtful Secretary of 
War, General Cameron, whose prophetic fears were verified by the 
result, was unheeded by men intent on personal aggrandizement. 
Duty was set aside for selfish purposes, which failed of accomplish- 
ment. The battle, unnecessarily deferred for five days, enabling 
the enemy to bring up his last available man, was not delayed for 
two days longer in accordance with the express request of the 
President and Secretary, that Patterson's army might be brought 
upon the field. 

The date ot the receipt of that telegram is fixed by the explicit 
statement of General Scott and other indubitable evidence. Gen- 
eral McDowell seems to have labored under inability to state any 
discomposing fact. We quote the questions of the committee and 
the General's answers as reported. (Page 40. Part 2d) 

" Q. When did you first learn that Johnston was released from 
Patterson and down here ? 

" A. I first learned it beyond all doubt on the field of battle. 

" Q. Did no one tell you before? 



8 

" A. A man came to me before. But Great God ! I heard every 
rumor in the world, and I put them all aside unless a man spoke 
of his own personal knowledge. Some person came to me ; I did 
not know who he was. I had people coming to me all the time, 
each one with something different. All that I paid no attention 
to. This person came to me and said, I think, ' The news is that 
Johnston has joined Beauregard.' He might have said that some- 
body else had joined Beauregard. He did not know it himself; 
had heard it from others. Some one said : ' We heard the cars 
coming in last night.' Well, I expected that. I expected they 
would bring into Manassas every available man they could find. 
All I did expect was that General Butler would keep them engaged 
at Fortress Monroe, and Patterson would keep them engaged in 
the Valley of Virginia. That was the condition they accepted 
from me to go out and do this work." * * "*'• * 

This sounds like the grumbling of a disappointed contractor, 
seeking to lay the foundation for a claim for damages. 

General McDowell's plan of attack was good, and might have 
been successful if he had not been upon the field. Rich in theory, 
and a great master of words, he became suddenly bankrupt when 
the books failed him. He sent raw troops, brigaded on the 
march, into a country of whose topography he knew nothing, his 
generals being without tracings of the cross-roads by which either 
army could be concentrated, accompanied by members of Congress 
and others, as to a picnic. He sent his well-manned, admirably 
officered batteries, recklessly to the front on a reconnaisance, with 
out proper supports, and they fell into the hands of men who knew 
how to use them. 

General Griffin's lips are closed, but his reputation lives. Few 
can forget his sad protest, half stifled by sense of duty and 
professional pride : " I will obey the order ; but, mark my v/ords, 
those Zouaves will not support us; the battery will be lost." 
Ricketts, depressed by similar apprehensions, but upheld by like 
determination, obeyed the order with equal intrepidity and reluc- 
tance, playing well his part in the hopeless contest, till he fell beside 
his guns, unconscious of the furious struggle over his body. He 
was brought back from the confines of another world, and borne 
off the field by the victorious rebels. Into the dark Valley of the 



Shadow of Death, the men of their respective commands followed 

the path of duty. 

" Boldly they rode and well, 

Into the jaws of Death, 
Into the mouth of Hell 
Rode the " two batteries. 

McDowell's army was rich in personnel, as in material of war. 
The men of the long tried, little, old army were thoroughly in- 
structed and well led. The manner in which they did their work 
precludes eulogy. The rank and file of the volunteers were, with 
few exceptions, made up of such men as no other country ever 
put into the field. Officers honorably accredited by faithful service 
in Mexico and on the frontier, many of them graduates of the 
Military Academy, were there to impart the one thing needful, to 
make these men the efficient soldiers many of them afterwards 
became. The necessity for that instruction which had been the 
o-reat object of his own military education, and was the pressing 
need of the hour, was overlooked by General McDowell. Officers, 
misled by evil example, trod the crooked paths of politicians. The 
men were left to their own devices, and permitted to annoy every- 
body near them but the enemy. Experienced officers of the old 
army testified that their misconduct when the tide of battle was 
turning, was the result of the unrestrained orgies of the previous 
week. 

Heroic courage was displayed at Bull Run that day, but the 
bravest could only mourn the inefficiency which secured no return 
for squandered lives. Sykes, in his quiet professional way, held 
his regulars up to their work, as coolly as if the other side was 
running away. In fact McDowell had very little the start of the 
confederates. Whipped as badly as he was, they held the field only 
because he left it. The men who fled, were as brave as those who 
stayed to fight. Most of them were the superiors of their better 
disciplined comrades, but they did not know the magic power of 
the touch of the elbow, and had not acquired the habit of prompt 
unhesitating obedience, without which the bravest men are useless. 

Napoleon gave a vivid picture of such spontaneous combats as 
the first Bull Run : " C'cst une affaire de fetes de colonnes oli la 
bravoure seidc decide tout." The improvised Union general, un- 
fitted by long service on the staff and the consequent enfeeblement 



10 

from disuse of some of his faculties, for the responsibihties of 
supreme command, came into conflict with the ablest soldier of the 
confederacy, and the country paid, in its best blood, the costs of 
action. 

Thousands saw their commander for the first time as he passed 
them in retreat, deaf to all suggestions of retrieval. Governor 
Ogden had wisely put in command of a New Jersey regiment, 
whence he was promoted to a brigade, an old infantry officer who, 
after graduating, had seen thirty years of active .service and had 
earned two brevets. General Montgomery succeeded in arrest- 
ing General McDowell's headlong course, long enough to show the 
practicability of defeating the jubilant rebels, with his own brigade 
and five others, lying near him, not a man of whom had pulled 
trigger that day. Montgomery, recalling minor conflicts in which 
he had taken part, and Bonaparte's off-hand victory at Roverbello, 
where, retreating with forty thousand, he beat sixty thousand Aus- 
trians, striking the exultant pursuers successively, as they came up 
in isolated colums. General McDowell listening politely, but with 
evident reluctance, and raising his disencumbered arm, to empha- 
size his reply, said : " Too much demoralized, too much demoral- 
ized," and rode on to " cover Washington." Its inhabitants thought 
it sufficiently covered for some time thereafter, and would gladly 
have removed most of the covering. 

The effective strength of McDowell's reserves, which were not 
handled at all, was double that of Patterson's army on that day, 
and equal to four-fifths of the entire rebel force upon the field. 

Much of the misconduct from which the Federal army suffered in 
reputation, was properly chargeable upon the rabble accompanying 
it. See Prof. Coppee's edition Comte de Paris p. 25 1. " There had 
followed in the train of McDowell's army from Alexandria, mem- 
bers of Congress, men of all parties and professions, journalists 
from every country, photographers with their instruments, — all 
assembled to witness the defeat of the rebels. Although out of 
reach of cannon shot, and frequently prevented by the woods from 
seeing the battle, this crowd actually imagined they were partici- 
pating in it, and this thought long aftbrded them a foolish satisfac- 
tion. It finally moved off slowly in the direction of Alexandria, on 
receiving the first tidings of the check experienced by the Federals. 
But when the fugitives came crowding into the road they were 
following, and the bullets began to whistle close to the ears of 
those men hara.ssed by fatigue and fright, a wild panic seized both 



II 

soldiers and spectators. The most fiery street orators were seen 
leading the way in a rapid flight, and journalists who pretended to 
describe the battle from a distance, outstripped the whole senseless 
crowd in swiftness." 

If these people had been turned back at the bridge end, and a 
single hour properly devoted to the use of the spade, the Federal 
Army might have escaped defeat, even under McDowell. 

Wellington, with little time for reflection after taking the 
Duchess of Richmond in to supper, forced by "the volcanic incurs- 
ion of Napoleon " to fight on ground he would not have chosen, 
made such use of the park wall of Hogoumont, the straggling 
houses of La Haye Sainte, and the little stream of Papillotte, that 
victory rested with the allies at the end of that grim fight. At 
Waterloo, veteran faced veteran. At Bull Run, both armies were 
indigenous, but General McDowell had all the disciplined men on 
the field, and ample time for choice of strong natural positions. 

The best regular officers engaged spoke with enthusiastic pride 
of the good conduct of their raw countrymen. James Cameron 
rode to his death at the head of the 79th New York, as calmly as 
he would have done forty years before to a delegate election, look- 
ing, with like singleness of purpose, to victory in the end, no 
matter what might intervene. We know nothing of the sins of 
the Pennsylvania politician, but, whether few or many, the record- 
ing angel did well, in view of that last unselfish act of devotion to 
duty, to blot them out forever. 

Corcoran, equally uninstructed, held his green Celts well in 
hand to the last, and they would have thought it pastime to throw 
up such intrenchments as might have assured victory, or a safe 
refuge at Centreville. The troops were too raw, upon both sides, 
for such fighting as characterized' later conflicts. At Gettysburg, 
Pickett had nearly as many men shot down in one division, 
in twenty-five minutes, as the aggregate of killed and wounded re- 
ported by McDowell and Johnston ; and Porter, with one corps, 
had nearly four times as many casualties at Gaines' Mill. 

High encomiums are justly paid to the chivalry of the South 
at Bull Run, but there was equal chivalry of action on the part of 
the North. Unusual exposure of officers was unavoidable on both 
sides, and the usual consequence followed. A majority of the 
Confederate colonels were put hors-de-combat, Beauregard, Jack- 



12 

son, Kirby Smith and Hamptc4^vounded, Bee and Barton killed. 
The relative loss of officers on the Federal side was heavy. The 
prestige of continuous success and the promise of victory were 
with that side, till the loss of Griffin's and Ricketts' batteries, 
thrown together and left without proper support in an exposed po- 
sition, apparently for convenience of transfer, deprived the right, 
until then equally victorious with the left, of the means of following 
up its advantages, or holding the positions won by honest fighting 
while advancing over a mile and a half of hotly contested ground. 
No provision had been made by General McDowell to guard 
against the consequences of a temporary check, and a rout followed. 

When the enemy were in full retreat at Wagram, the veteran 
French infantry, after winning a decisive victory, became panic- 
stricken and raised the cry, " Sauvc qui p cut ^ but Napoleon did 
not return to Paris. Moreau gained the battle of Engen with four 
companies of the 58th. The wavering fortunes of Marengo were 
decided by bringing up Kellerman's Cavalry and the 9th Light In- 
fantry. McDowell had more men idle in reserve than he put in 
action. 

Napoleon's system, as stated by himself, was " to make ten leagues 
a day, to combat, and to canton afterwards in repose." McDowell 
tried the effect of inversion, reposing in advance, active in retreat : 
" For titer in modo, suaviter in re.'' 

Napoleon's habitual order, when threatened by cavalry in Egypt, 
was, to " form square with artillery at the angles, asses and savans 
in the centre." McDonald saved most of his asses and savatts, but 
the enemy got his best artillery. 

The plains of Manassas had long been the shooting ground of 
Washingtonians, and maps showing approximately all cross roads 
could have been easily had, but McDowell's subordinate com- 
manders were left in ignorance of the existence of such roads, till 
they stumbled upon them under fire. The fat cattle of Monroe and 
Greenbrier, and the smaller herds of Fauquier and Loudon, better 
cared for than our men at Bull Run, probably because of their 
availability for profit after death, had for a century been driven to 
eastern markets, over these grassy plains. Flesh on the hoof, 
would have sufficed to keep McDowell's men in fighting condition, 
if the usual five days cooked provisions had been overlooked. 



13 

Precaution was left out of the account by General McDowell, and 
defeat ensued. 

In his very full explanatory statements before the Committee on 
the Conduct of the War, General McDowell referred fairly to the 
fact, that we had no officer who had ever handled 20,000 men, and 
spoke modestly of the advantages he had enjoyed over his un- 
travelled seniors, in seeing large bodies of foreign troops man- 
oeuvred, but he omitted to state that it was on gala-days only. His 
testimony would, on that point at least, have been complete and 
conclusive, if he had added that he had never commanded a com- 
pany on parade, or a man in action, prior to what he euphemisti- 
cally calls his •' somewhat rapid promotion," and assignment to 
the command of the largest army which had ever been embodied 
in America. 

Jomini says, " It cannot be denied that a man come from the 
staff may become a great Captain as well as another, but it will 
not be for having grown old in the functions of a quarter-master, 
that he will have the capacity for supreme command ; it will be 
because he possesses in himself the natural genius for war and the 
requisite character. * * * Those even of the respectable disciples 
of Euclid, who might be capable of commanding an army well, must, 
to do it with glory and success, forget a little of their trigonometry; 
it is at least the course that Napoleon has taken, whose most bril- 
liant operations seem to belong much more to the domain of 
poetry, than to that of the exact sciences ; the cause of this is sim- 
ple, it is that zuar is an impassioned drama, and by no means a 
mathematical operation. * * * Now for one hundred battles 
gained by skilful manoeuvres, there are two or three gained by 
fortuitous accidents." 

One qualified witness specified as a cause of the rout, " the want 
of a head-quarters somewhere on the field." There was a greater 
want — something wherewith to fill that head-quarters. McDowell's 
officers, when left to themselves, did well, driving the enemy, and 
winning a substantial victory, though many fought " without knowl- 
edge of war or fear of death." Two cases of interference on his 
part — his disposition of the batteries of Griffin and Ricketts, and 
his order to the N. Y. 14th to change direction, which precipitated 
their loss, despite the earnest, well-considered effort of General 
Averill to avert it — were of themselves sufficient to insure defeat. 

" He dealt on lieutenantry 
And nothing knew of the great squares of war." 



14 

Balzac forshadowed McDowil's Bull Run, when clothing, in 
Livrc Mystique, his dreamy speculations with the imagery of the 
battle field : " // Die scmblc que nous sommes a la veillc d'une grandc 
bataillc huniainc. Les forces sont la ; mais je n'y vols pas dc gen- 
eral'' 

General McDowell swore that if Johnston " had 40,000 men, I 
had the whole of them on me." No such smothering force was re- 
quired. Johnston's little finger was thicker than McDowell's loins. 
If he had arrived earlier, McDowell's defeat would have been im- 
measurably worse than that which he secured for himself, with 
Johnston's best assistance at the eleventh hour. General Johnston, 
who combines Wellington's rapid tactical coup d'ail with Napo- 
leon's intuitive genius for discovering the enemy's weak point, and 
bursting through it, crushing both wings in succession, or if strong 
enough, at the same moment, would not have been long in finding 
the gap, to which General Keyes referred, between his command 
and Sherman's, which certainly neither he nor General Sherman 
would have left if not controlled by superior orders. 

General Keyes in reply to the question, " To what did you at- 
tribute the di.saster of that day?", said: " To the want of 10,000 
more troops — that is, I think if we had 10,000 more troops than 
we had to go into action, say at eleven o'clock in the morning, we 
should certainly have beaten them. I followed along down the 
.stream, and Sherman's battery diverged from me, so that it left a 
wide gap between us, and 10,000 more men could have come in 
between me and Sherman which was the weak point in our line, and 
before Johnston's reserves came up it would have been won. I 
thought the day was won about two o'clock ; but about half-past 
three o'clock a sudden change in the firing took place, which, to 
my ear, was very ominous. I sent up my aide-de-camp to find out 
about the matter, but he did not come back." 

Many a weary union soldier writhing under humiliating defeat, 
bitterly recalled Sarsfield's frank offer, on realizing the emptiness 
of the man in whose cause he had reddened the Boyne with fra- 
ternal blood : " Only change kings, and we will fight the battle 
over again." 

If there had been a woman near, she might have been held re- 
sponsible for the disaster with as much plausibility and good con- 
science as Adam —the first, if not the greatest, sneak on record — 
transferred to his companion the odium of that first disobedience 



15 

which " brought sin into the world with all its woe." Adam only 
wished to save himself. The same natural desire led General Mc- 
Dowell into crooked paths before he knew where they would lead 
him. His field of selection was large. Adam was limited to one 
timid creature, as much out of place in strife, as were General 
McDowell's batteries in that exhaustive reconnaissance which left 
them in the hands of the enemy. He did not mean to abandon 
Evg without an effort, as McDowell did his guns. As soon as he 
gathered courage in the shelter of her pro forma petticoat, he 
came to the rescue, with that subtle implication which underlies 
General McDowell's official report : " The woman whom thou gavest 
with me, gave me of the tree and I did eat." He had merely eaten, 
as men still do, asking no questions for conscience sake, whatever 
a woman gives them. Adam, in the long run, came off second best, 
as did General McDowell. 

When McDowell's legions went across the Potomac, " in gay 
theatric pride," nothing of the pomp and circumstance of war was 
wanting to make the marvellous assurance of their untried leader 
" double sure." The plaudits of beauty cheered them on to their 
great duty. When their own guns were turned upon them, and most 
of them were left without intelligent control, to fight or run, as might 
be most agreeable to them, the stragglers met prompt sympathy and 
succor, .from the sex, " last at the cross, first at the sepulchre," 
for whose gentle ministrations man yearns " when pain and anguish 
wring the brow." The perfumed kerchiefs which had waved them 
on to unanticipated disaster, were saturated with eau-de- cologne, 
and bound around the heads of famishing men, most of whom 
would have preferred a little whiskey. The best instincts of the 
sex controlled it then, as on all occasions grave enough to demand 
their exercise. Its versatility was displayed as soon as the hospi- 
tals were emptied. Many, who had been most devoted by the 
couch of suffering, availed themselves of the facilities proverbially 
afforded idle hands, by an illustrious personage always in office, 
and went back to mischief. Some of them are at it yet. Women 
have brought mischief, with men, into the world, from the first to 
the last syllable of recorded time, and have taken the consequences, 
cheerfully and gracefully. 

General Joseph E. Johnston did enough to defeat a dozen 
McDowells ; but General McDowell's considerate courtesy prevented 



i6 

all reference, in his report, to an obvious truth, which might have 
inflicted an additional pang on the self love of our people already 
stung to the quick. Without Adam's easy resource, and con- 
scious that he must go beyond his lines for a scapegoat or face pop- 
ular clamor in his own person, he chose his victim with character- 
istic ingenuity. General Patterson, though he had served as an 
officer of the regular army for years before General McDowell was 
born, was, when selected by General Scott, at the outbreak of the 
rebellion, for the command of a department, a mere militia officer. 
He was in his seventieth year and if he had fulfilled General 
McDowell's reasonable expectation that he should soon pass hence, 
there would have been an end of him, and of the odium created 
for him. 

We do not propose to re-open the controversy as to the causes 
of the disaster at Bull Run. We allude to it, only because it fur- 
nishes the key to the malignant pursuit of General Porter by Gen- 
eral McDowell. Porter was Patterson's chief of staff, cognizant of 
all his plans, and cordially approving his conduct of that campaign. 
To condemn effectually Patterson's strategy, it was necessary to 
dispose of Porter. He was in the full flush of early manhood, 
commanding the confidence and regard of his fellows The maiden 
promise of brilliant service in Mexico, had been redeemed with 
mature judgement in Texas. His courage, capacity and professional 
skill, could not be gainsaid, but it was safe to let slip upon him, 
not " the dogs of war," but that other variety, who, avoiding un- 
necessary contact with the enemy, discharged their conscience by 
barking at the heels of every officer in the field, whose achieve- 
ments were not sanguinary enough to feed their carnivorous loyalty. 

This was the motive for the crime committed against General 
Porter. W^here was the motive for the crime against himself and 
his country with which the cpnspirators sought to charge him? 
Those who found their account in halting between two opin- 
ions, did so at the outset or while the question of ultimate 
success was an open one. It was no longer so when Porter was 
charged with treason. Every waiter upon Providence could then 
see that disloyalty was at a discount. 

His name impelled self-respect. He derived his blood from a 
/^y^^y^^ gallant -soldier, the brother of Commodore David Porter, and a 
mother who had, underlying the gentle graces of womanhood, the 
strong moral fibre which makes manhood, warp and woof. 



His first campaign was in Mexico. He took a conspicuous part 
in every action on the lower line, from Vera Cruz to the Belen Gate, 
where he was wounded. He was brevetted " Captain, September 
8tii, 1847, for Gallant and Meritorious Conduct in the Battle of 
Molino del Rey," and Major five days afterwards, " for Gallant and 
Meritorious Services in the Battle of Chapultepec." His uniform 
good conduct attracted the regard of older soldiers, who selected 
him thereafter for arduous services requiring brain and nerve. 

His first service in the Civil War was the bringing off, single- 
handed, from Texas, of the troops General Twiggs had arranged 
to abandon, with large material of war, to the rebels. Ordered 
to Washington for consultation, he prepared his own instructions, 
which were approved by General Scott. Foreseeing what was be- 
fore us, Porter inserted discretionary authority, to take such steps, 
in the event of the secession of Texas, as should prevent the cloth- 
ing, arms, ammunition and other public property, from falling into 
the hands of the rebels. Mr. Buchanan's Secretary of War, Joseph 
Holt, afterwards Judge Advocate General, then holding extreme 
State-rights opinions — the direct antipodes of his later theories of 
government — refused to give such authority, as " he would not indi- 
cate anything showing that he supposed any State would attempt to 
secede." He was fully advised as to the pending negotiation, and 
Twiggs effectually disposed of his time-serving theory, by surren- 
dering troops and property to the commissioners of Texas, before 
the arrival of Porter with one hundred and twenty recruits, at In- 
dianola, March 4th. With a much superior force, well-armed, and, 
through the courtesy of General Twiggs, provided with ample mu- 
nitions, they demanded the surrender of the steamship, with all on 
board, including $40,000 in gold. Porter replied that he had 
made arrangements to defend the ship, and would, if necessary, 
throw the gold overboard. The commissioners, ignorant of the 
strength and character of his force, temporized. Porter secured 
for $13,000 the Star of the West, to take such troops and batteries 
as could not be got on board the Webster, and by night all were 
under way for the North. He rescued between four hundred and 
five hundred men, with Stoneman's cavalry company. Mr. Buchan- 
an's administration wished to secure old soldiers enough to garrison 
Key West and Tortugas, both empty and in imminent danger of 
capture. Porter landed a company at each, made such other dis- 



i8 

positions as he deemed necessary, and arrived at New York, with 
the residue, about April 5th. 

General Scott, who had not altogether lost, on the down-hill of 
life, his tact in the selection of suitable men for service, telegraphed, 
in characteristic phrase, an order to General Patterson, command- 
ing the department of Washington, which had been extended to 
include the States of Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and Penn- 
sylvania : " Absorb Fitz-John Porter if he comes within your reach." 
As Adjutant-General of that department, and subsequently of the 
Army of the Shenandoah, Porter rendered large assistance in the 
conversion of good raw material into patient, steady, enduring 
soldiers, the names of many of whom, living and dead, are cherished 
throughout the length and breadth of the land. 

The Count de Paris thus describes Porter's first armed encounter 
with some of those who had stood shoulder to shoulder with him 
in Mexico. "On the 2d of July he (Patterson) forded the Potomac 
at Williamsport, and eight kilometres beyond that point, on the 
borders of the stream of Falling Waters, his advance met a brigade 
of the enemy's infantry commanded by General Jackson, who was 
subsequently to acquire such great celebrity, and the cavalry of 
Stuart, a friend of the latter, doomed to perish like him, while 
leaving a reputation almost equal to his own. The first feats of 
these two illustrious oflficers, in behalf of the cause they had just 
espoused, were not fortunate. Cut up by the Federal artillery, which 
was better served than their own, they were obliged, on the arrival 
of Abercrombie's brigade, to beat a speedy retreat, only stopping 
at Bunker's Hill, between Martinsburg and Winchester, where they 
found re-inforcements forwarded in haste by Johnston." 

Many, whose heads are shot with gray, recall his marvellous 
ubiquity, knightly figure, and inspiriting bearing, as he sped over 
that field of partially cut wheat, never to be harvested, on the 
bright July morning when the ball was opened at Falling Waters. 
His superb horsemanship lifted the animal into close communion 
with himself, making him the base of a centaur, instinctively alive 
to all he had to do, while Lieutenant Perkins at the little black- 
smith shop interchanged arguments, under the eye of the com- 
manding general, with the confederate battery of rifled guns, four 
hundred yards down the straight, hot turnpike, under Rev. Mr. 
Pendleton, who did credit to his West Point training, though in 
error as to his proper colors. Jackson stood beside him, his curious 
figure in the repose of apparent indifference, awaiting the result as 



19 

calmly as at Bull Run, where, before the month was out, he earned 
the name which could not die with him. 

A Philadelphia merchant, quarter-master of the brigade with 
which George H. Thomas — Primus inter pares, assigned to it by 
General Patterson, while only a junior major of cavalry, — gave bright 
promise of his glorious after career, will remember his reluctance 
to execute the order of Colonel Porter to burn the captured tents, 
camp equipage, etc., and his unavailing effort to save, despite the 
want of transportation, one tent, never used, which bore the name 
of " Colonel T. J. Jackson " and the inscription of its gift by '* the 
ladies of Berkeley Co., Va." 

Mr. Speaker Randall, then a non-commissioned officer of the 
First Troop Philadelphia City Cavalry, (a corps whose founders 
learned the art of war under Washington, whose flag became the 
flag of the revolted colonies, and whose members never failed to 
uphold that flag gallantly, when the opportunity was fairly offered 
them), would have been a competent witness as to the conspicuous 
absence of treason in the outward conduct of Colonel Porter on that 
field. The survivors of his gallant comrades, thirty-nine of whom 
afterwards received commissions in the army, could have borne 
equally emphatic testimony. 

Boys forgot their own danger — escaping the uncomfortable 
trepidation which visits most men on their first field, — in their admir- 
ation of his dazzling intrepidity. His only failure was in spurring 
his horse against a fence which the proud brute could not leap, the 
attempt resulting in an ugly injury to himself. 

The best blood of the adhering States was there, in arms for 
the union — old organizations with luminous records of past service, 
and new ones whose rank and file would have been fit founders 
of commonwealths. The country would have accepted their ver- 
dict in any case, and in Porter's it would have been one of unanimous 
acquittal. 

Fitz-John Porter was either an honest man, or a consummate 
actor, endowed with powers of deception never so successfully ex- 
ercised since " Lucifer, son of the morning " fell. He kept up the 
deception — if deception it were — on the more sanguinary fields 
where he won the yellow sash. 

If the pertinacious pursuit of Porter by McDowell and Pope, so 
superior to their onslaughts on the common enemy, had proved fully 



20 

successful, and he had been shoTTthe men of the army of the Shen- 
andoah, and of the Fifth Corps, would have protected the reputa- 
tion and brought its assassins to justice. The rank and emolu- 
ments conferred as rewards for their inexpensive loyalt}' would have 
availed them as little as the thirty pieces of silver did the swift 
witness of old. Should a call be made to-morrow for volunteers 
for perilous service, the survivors of that corps and army would 
spurn the blandishments of McDowell and Pope and fall in behind 
their stricken victim. Lubricity rarely loses its market value with 
civilians, even when in obvious overstock ; but soldiers, who have 
measured their superiors under fire, never fail, when again called 
upon to take their lives in their hands, to appreciate the worth of 

" A soldier, fit to stand by Csesar, 
And give direction." 

When Porter was stricken down, no man of his age, had ren- 
dered more — few so much — effective .service. He was a soldier 
by inheritance, by intuition, and by education. His peculiar fitness 
for that profession was known of all men. He believed himself fit 
for no other. He loved it and expected to die in it. He had won 
distinction beyond the wildest dream of boyhood. What could 
have induced him to falsify the record of his past life, and sully a 
historic name which he was to transmit to children growing up at 
his home ? 

The unavoidable concession of personal courage and professional 
proficiency, deepened the infamy of his alleged crime. Arnold, 
removed from command and under arrest, did for the John Pope 
of Saratoga what he could not do for himself; but neither Quebec nor 
Saratoga can obliterate the foul record of his baffled treachery at 
West Point. If the charges made at the instance of General Pope 
by his Inspector-General, and sustained by the perilous oaths of 
Generals McDowell, Pope and Roberts were true. General Porter 
was, with less provocation, guilty of a crime of deeper dye than 
Arnold, a crime for which the contemplated forfeiture of his life 
would have been an inadequate penalty. Stripped of verbiage, they 
were that Fitz-John Porter, a capable soldier, distinguished by the 
President with the highest brevet rank he could confer, purposely 
evaded or delayed the execution of an order, delivered to him in 
season, to insure the defeat of the Federal army, that his personal 
friend might be reinstated in command. He was accused of 



21 

shameful gambling with the blood of men who loved him and 
cheerfully followed him to death, in the cause he professed to 
espouse. 

Delay, always dangerous to those who seek bad ends by bad 
means, would have been fatal if time for reflection had been given 
when such a charge was brought against such a man. The mind 
of the Secretary of War had been poisoned and he had pre-judged 
the case. An able, dogmatic lawyer, he knew nothing of the/^r- 
sonnel of the the Army, and very little of human nature. His 
revolutionary instincts had for a time been held in check by the 
conservatism of his professional education. Conscious of intellect- 
ual superiority, strong in will, and wielding power without ascer- 
tainable limit, the Carnot of the Rebellion looked to the Presidency 
as his right, and took the shortest road to attain it, paying small 
heed to law or the forms of law. 

His predecessor, a gifted reader of men, blessed with a better 
balanced mind, was then, to the great detriment of the Union cause, 
in honorable exile in Russia, in obedience to the behests of a faction 
of his own party. His retirement from the War Office may fairly 
be said to have cost the nation two additional years of internecine 
strife, with their lavish expenditure of men and money. Whatever 
may have been the political sins of Simon Cameron's long and ac- 
tive public life — and many officials are obnoxious to criticism on 
that score — it cannot be denied that he gave to every general 
in the field, the cordial, energetic support they sorely needed, and 
rarely received from other civilians. " Rich in saving common- 
sense," undazzled by the glamour of a nomination for the Presiden- 
cy, and therefore indifferent as to the prestige of a possible drum- 
and-fife nominee on the other side, he measured from the outset, 
as neither Mr. Lincoln nor any other member of his cabinet did, 
the magnitude of the long-deferred conflict, and addressed himself 
vigorously to the work of putting down rebellion with the strong 
hand, deferring till a more convenient season all expression of sen- 
timental emotion and all diplomatic palaver. 

The announcement of the court before which General Porter 
was to be arraigned, left no doubt on the mind of any one familiar 
with the ductile material of which it was in part composed, and the 
deep-seated prejudices of its honest and able members, that it was 
framed for conviction. When the detail was shown by Mr. Stanton 



22 

to one of his assistant-secretariesThe said what crossed many minds, 
on sight of that extraordinary array : " That Court will condemn 
General Porter with or without evidence." The Secretary made 
no response. The selection had been made by " a power behind 
the throne, greater than the throne itself" 

Fitting witnesses were not wanting. 

When England crowned her centuries of cumulative crime 
against Ireland, hounding to death or expatriation her best and 
ablest sons, for the increaseful crime of their nativity, she used sim- 
ilar machinery. Curran, in an eloquent effort to rescue the spirit 
of law from the fangs of those charged with the administration of 
its forms, described the instruments of power pursuing a wretched 
felon, as he sank in the descending scale of degraded humanity, 
until he stood at bay in the last and lowest resorts of vice. Once 
in their toils, " he was immured in the lowest dungeon of the cas- 
tle, till his heart festered and rotted within him, when they dug 
him up, an informer." 

Constructive treason was conclusively established by the uncon- 
tradictable testimony of one witness, who, during a single in- 
terview of ten minutes, saw it in Porter's eye, as plainly as the snake 
is visible in that of the horse, recently on exhibition. Lieutenant- 
Colonel T. C. H. Smith, of Pope's staff, swore that Porter treated 
him politely, but that he was so well satisfied by an indescribable 
sneer in his eye, that he would " fail Pope," that he " would shoot 
him that night, so far as any crime before God was concerned, if 
the law would allow me (him) to do it." As this clairvoyant was 
never known to do any of the rebels a mischief, or indicted for 
murder by the name he bore in the army, it may be assumed that 
his homicidal mania exhaled through the scoria of that slight spas- 
modic eruption, and that General Porter may hereafter keep his 
evil eye open or shut at pleasure. 

The conduct of the investigation was in keeping with the con- 
ditions under which the court was organized. The Secretary of 
War refused Porter permission to send his aids to Fredericksburg 
to find witnesses then on duty there. Letters to and from them 
and others, were opened and the contents withheld. Rings rarely 
leave behind them anything which can be used to their prejudice, 
or for the rescue of their victims. The files of the War Depart- 
ment have been thoughtfully relieved of many papers, which might 



23 

have thrown light upon history, and its opposite upon individual 
actors. 

The order for the Court-Martial of which General David Hunter 
was the fit President, directed the dissolution of " the military com- 
mission convened for the trial of Major-General Porter, on charges 
preferred by Major-General Pope." No authority of American 
law can be found for the constitution of such tribunals, but Mrs. 
Surratt was murdered by one. Judge-Advocate General Holt 
sought to relieve the conspirators of inevitable odium, when he said 
in open court, December 3d, 1862: "The accused refers to the or- 
der appointing a military commission, in which it was recited that 
it was to try charges preferred by Major-General Pope. In point 
of fact no charges ever were preferred by him. That commission 
was dissolved, and this general court-martial appointed by virtue 
of this order." The Ring had an illegal commission— eight days 
old when dissolved — ready to dispose of General Porter, but could 
produce no charges, General Pope's heart having failed him. The 
cart was before the horse, like McDowell's batteries at Bull Run. 

It is a task of no ordinary difficulty to reconcile General Pope's 
statements with each other, and the student of history may be mis- 
led by accepting either of the following emphatic assertions. Gen- 
eral Pope swore December 5th, 1862, (P. 23. Part ist. Last edi- 
tion.) : " I have not preferred charges against him. I have mere- 
ly set forth the facts in my official reports which embrace the opera- 
tions of everybody else connected with that army, as well as of 
General Porter. * * * * j Jq j^q^. ]^now of my own knowledge 
who exhibits these charges. * * * 1^ " Qn the 22d of May, 
1865, he wrote Honorable B. F. Wade, Chairman of the Joint-Com- 
mittee on the Conduct of the War : " I considered it a duty I owed 
to the country to bring Fitz-John Porter to justice, lest at another 
time, and with greater opportunities, he might do that which would 
be still more disastrous. With his conviction and punishment 
ended all official connection I have since had with anything that 
related to the operations I conducted in Virginia." 

If Pope had, as was intended, brought the charges, it would 
have devolved on the President to order the court — securing cer- 
tainly a larger body, probably a more impartial one — and his In- 
spector-General Roberts fathered them. Pope himself was but a 
soiled glove on the nervous hand of Irvin McDowell, the Mephis- 



24 

topheles of the darkest episode ^i that dark period of our national 
history. 

McDowell knew when " to strike the sounding lyre." His 
touch was not a light one. Cremonas could be laid aside when 
cracked, and a full orchestra substituted, with such a vast magazine 
of brass and wind instruments at command. The hand of a master, 
without weakness of heart, or scruple of conscience, was felt 
throughout. 

Carefully educated, as the popular mind had been, to accept 
reckless tyranny for loyalty, some public apology was felt to be 
due for the construction of that unique engine of arbitrary power. 
It was officially made by Major-General Halleck, in the order de- 
tailing it : " No other officers than these named can be assembled 
without manifest injury to the service." Two gentlemen sat as 
judges, who had borne arms at Bull Run, and were still smarting 
under the humiliation inflicted upon them by superior incompetence. 
The singular adaptation of means to ends shown by General 
McDowell at the first Bull Run, was repeated at the second affair. 
He threw forward General Ricketts, afterwards detailed as a 
member of the Court-Martial, with a single division into Thor- 
oughfare Gap, only to be roughly handled and forced back by 
a superior force. It had been found necessary, in order to pro- 
cure the smallest number of members with which a court-martial 
can be lawfully organized, to take an officer better fitted for service 
as a witness, and the government called him from the bench to 
the witness stand. Ohe old regular officer, whose inherited instincts 
revolted at the service required of him, was relieved and a Brigadier 
General, till then unknown to fame, bearing the expressive and 
suggestive name of Slough, was detailed in his place. 

The Specification most damaging to Porter at the time, and 
still exercising a vague mischievous influence, imputing " unnec- 
essary slowness," "falling back," "delays." "drawing away," 
charging "that he did finally so feebly fall upon the enemy's lines 
as to make little or no impression on the saihe," and asserting that 
" he did not make the resistance demanded by his position," was 
withdrawn by the Judge Advocate without permitting him to ad- 
duce ample proof, ready on the spot, to refute it, but persistently 
retained by that crafty lawyer as part of the record, that it might 
contribute to his downfall. 



25 

On the 6tli of January, the following communication was read 

to the Court. 

" War Department, January jjth, i86j. 
General : The state of the service imperatively demands that 
the proceedings of the Court over which you are now presiding, 
having been pending more than four weeks, should be brought to 
a close without any unnecessary delay. You are therefore directed 
to sit without regard to hours, and close your proceedings as 
speedily as may be consistent with justice and the public service. 

Yours truly, 

Edwin M. Stanton, 
Major General Hunter, Secretary of War. 

President, etc. etc. 

The final session was held on the roth of same month. On 
that day, after hearing the defense of the accused, and the remarks 
of the Judge-Advocate, the Court found General Porter guilty of 
both charges, of four specifications in whole, and of two in part, 
and sentenced him, " to be cashiered, and to be forever disqualified 
from holding any office of trust or profit under the Government 
of the United States." 

The original design was to shoot Porter, but the Holy Vehme 
lacked vigorous iniquity to bring forth what had been conceived in 
sin, or their plans were modified in deference to the integrity and 
self-respect of a majority of the members of the Court, or to the 
idiosyncrasies of the extraordinary man then at the White House. 
The task of getting the President's approval of the sentence was 
assigned to Mr. Joseph Holt, who saw that he could best effect his 
purpose by letting him know as little as possible. 

While a member of Congress, Mr. Lincoln paid little attention 
to the claims of society. He devoted himself to the discharge of 
public duties and those devolving on the " Eight Indians," a vol- 
unteer committee raised to make General Taylor the Whig nomi- 
nee for the Presidency in lieu of Mr. Clay, of which the late Vice- 
President of the Southern Confederacy is believed to be the only 
survivor. These lacked sufficient friction to reduce his sharp points. 
When he took the reins the pressure was greater. State Rights, of 
which he had been an ardent and able advocate — State Rights in- 
carnate and run mad — had crossed the Rubicon and threatened to 
march on Rome. Called to govern a republic, which had for more 
than a quarter of a century been steadily tending to disintegration, 



26 

he took office under the forms^T law, and in accordance with its 
spirit, while in a minority of a million of voters. Many thoughtful, 
and more despondent men regretted the votes cast for him, when 
the election fireworks were over. 

The frantic fire on Sumter gave him his first real strength with 
the people. The masses of his growing party stood to him as one 
man, and the flower of the Democratic party, following the patri- 
otic example of the War Federalists in 1812, rallied promptly in 
support of the Constitution and the lawfully-chosen chief magistrate. 
That party furnished its full share of the brain and blood which did 
the work of salvation. Strong thenceforward with the masses, he 
received little aid from those of whom he had most right to expect 
it. His first hour of conscious isolation was his beginning of 
strength. With the sad conviction forced upon him, that he could 
no longer lean with confidence upon man or woman, he put him- 
self upon "' God and the Country." Neither deserted him. 

Men of the woods or the prairie may remain through life men 
of few ideas, but these will be in keeping with thegrandeur of their 
early surroundings. Abraham Lincoln, one of the most remark- 
able products of virgin soil, was improved by transplantation. His 
mind was growing vigorously when the assassin's ball arrested sen- 
sation in his teeming brain. He was undervalued by those nearest 
him. He looked through most men, and enjoyed the self-sufficiency 
which sought to ignore him. His Secretaries, who in 1 864 intrigued 
for the party nomination which should have been loyally yielded 
to their chief, were left to the quiet enjoyment of their illusions. 
He sometimes advertised them that he was aware of their treachery, 
by a trenchant witticism, better unuttered. Many who enjoyed 
the wit more than the taste of his jokes, little thought that he was 
merely amusing his audience, while choosing those with whom he 
might serve his own purposes or the country's needs. 

Justice may be done to the dead without invoking harsh judg- 
ment upon the living. Such abstinence is commanded by the 
common law of humanity — the great legacy of chivalry, the greater 
endowment of Christianity. 

Captain Pope joined the Presidential party on its way to Wash- 
ington, and is credited with the boast that he would " make a ten 
strike." He did, and the country staggered under the blow. 
Birds of prey and birds of passage flocked in. " Reptiles that 



crawl where man disdains to climb," swarmed around the new oc- 
cupants of the White House. The large generous ears of Mr. Lin- 
coln afforded no inlet, his honest heart no resting place for the sug- 
gestions of self-seekers. His simple nature threw off inconguity 
as healthy stomachs do certain poisons. 

The father of lies reached Adam's heart, by promising the 
mother of mankind equality with God and immunity from the 
consequences of a violation of His law. His consummate tact 
selected the primeval serpent, clad in colors pleasant as a West 
Point uniform to the eye of budding womanhood. The lineal suc- 
cessors to the first tempter followed in his footsteps, each telling 
his own flattering tale — all singing, in sibilant chorus, the old re- 
frain : " Ye shall not surely die." An amiable weakness was flat- 
tered into mischievous strength. 

Their ends accomplished, they forsook their victim, whose but- 
terfly existence lapsed into mental gloom, when the curtain fell on 
that Good Friday night, dark for the North, yearning for peace and 
restored union, darker for the desolated South, darkest of all for the 
abruptly enfranchised negroes. The pilot who had weathered the 
storm'and had the ship well in hand, went down in the open road- 
stead. Nothing of the hurricane remained but distant rumbling 
thunder. God's bow was set in the cloud. A faint line of bright- 
ening blue pervaded the West. The heavens gave promise of a 
gorgeous sunset, and a serene sky on the morrow, when from a 
cloud no bigger than a man's hand came the bolt which closed for 
earth a life, whose value to the country, when her needs trans- 
cended those of the darkest hour of dubious strife, would never 
otherwise have been known. 

Mr. Lincoln could have led, without substantial opposition or 
appreciable desertion, the dominant party, where it would have 
followed no other man. He was the Moses of the negroes, sent, as 
they believed, to lead them out of the wilderness. Losing him, 
they never again looked for the pillar of cloud by day, or of fire by 
night. They wandered hither and thither, seeking manna, and 
finding none. If it had fallen like the dew of heaven, they would 
not have gathered enough to have incurred the smallest risk of its 
spoiling on their hands. White men eat the quails. While their 
old masters cared for them to the extent of their diminished means, 
and the body of the American people wished them well, they were 



28 

in effect left to the worst elements of both sections. Equal rights 
before the law neither filled the stomach nor enlarged the mind. If 
they had had the " mule and forty acres," many would have sought 
guides of the superior race, to tell them when to plant and when to 
gather in. The traditions of bondage brought from the birthplace of 
slavery, and strengthened here, were nullified for a time by the im- 
plicit faith with which they transferred to one they had never seen, 
the child-like confidence and willing obedience yielded of old to 
masters who had gone to the field or the grave. Bereft of hope, 
by the frenzy of a new Ravaillac, they lost faith. Many returned 
to Fetichism. 

Christendom stood aghast at seeing four millions of a kindly, 
docile, imitative race, whose' fathers had been forced, as slaves, 
upon the colonies, against the protests of the colonists, in pursu- 
ance of the comprehensive policy of the British government, always 
on the lookout for income, which, in spite of similar protests, cram- 
med opium down Chinese throats with the ba)^onet — a race whose 
patient labor, with no return beyond clothing, subsistence and effi- 
cient care in sickness, had, under intelligent supervision, revived the 
garden of Eden in the South and built up the cities of the North — 
suddenly transmuted from chattels into American citizens and then, 
unprovided, turned loose to shift for themselves. If Mr. Lincoln 
had lived, they would not have been left uncared for, to find their 
way between Scylla and Charybdis, or be ground to powder be- 
tween the upper and the nether millstone, — Northern greed and 
Southern despair. 

When the President found that the personal loyalty, which had 
proved steadfast in poverty, was wavering in prosperty, he retired 
within himself, keeping faith with the offender. The fine gold in the 
quartz of that odd conglomerate^ shone with increasing splendor in 
his hour of desolation. The lines of his sad face became deeper. 
The shadow of the end — near at hand — was upon him. He was, 
indeed the " Knight of the rueful countenance," but true knight- 
hood was there loyal to the last. 

The Court disposed of, the President was to be looked to. Pop- 
ular feeling, unstable as water, and dangerous in its " fierce reflux," 
was not to be cheated of a rich sacrifice. Mr. Holt proved equal 
to the task of deceiving the over-worked and painfully pre-occupied 
Executive. He lacked no requisite for the delicate .service. Con- 



29 

tinuous tergiversation, in which he combined clearness of conception 
with rapidity of execution, had quahfied him for a wide range of 
employment. Entering pubHc hfe a disciple of the Calhoun school, 
he became, while Vicar of Bray, an Imperialist. Before he earned 
a national reputation, some indigenous St. Patrick — shall we say 
Beriah Magoffin ? — sent him to Washington in atonement for the 
sins of his native State, or in punishment for those of the nation ; 
and he flourished there with the vigor and venom of rattlesnake 
and copperhead, moccasin and cottonmouth. The fighting State, 
which sent representatives to each Congress, and whose Governor 
boasted that the draft did not concern him, as " Kentucky's quota 
was full on both sides," had in the Kitchen-Cabinet a non-combat- 
ant, a " Veiled Prophet." Servile alike to Buchanan and Lincoln, 
he would, in the corresponding period of English history, have been 
the brain and tongue of church and state under successive rulers, 
beginning with Laud, passing through all gradations of dissent to 
the Fifth Monarchy men, and then rebounding through the varie- 
ties of the Restoration. He would have been equally at home 
complimenting Oliver on " Son Ireton's " conduct of affairs in Ire- 
land, and in lucid exposition of the gain to the cause at Dunbar, 
by force of the " word "— " The Host of the Lord," — while the 
Scottish army only had " Covenant," for countersign, in a ready ex- 
hibition of the advantages to accrue from a bold assertion of pre- 
rogative, " the right divine of kings to govern wrong," or in the 
preparation of a hand-book of etiquette for the female ctat major 
of Charles Second, in which " intercommunings of spirits," should 
be intermingled with appropriate physical divertisements. 

The paper submitted at the request of the President for a state- 
ment of the facts of the caseand the law governing it, which bears 
internal evidence of having been prepared for the court, though 
not read to it, was the adroit plea of an unscrupulous prosecutor. 
It will be found in the proceedings of the court, (page 280, last 
edition,) and will repay careful study. We subjoin a paragraph 
which would seem to indicate that the wily politician had turned 
in despair to the creed of the new sect, whose only successful ex- 
exemplification of its power, has been in making chairs and tables 
play the part of inebriates. " It is a life-long experience that souls 
read each other, and that there are intercommunings of spirits 
through instrumentalities which, while defying all human analysis, 



30 

nevertheless completely command the homage of human faith. 
Great crimes too, like great virtues, often reveal themselves to close 
observers of character and conduct as unmistakably as a flower- 
garden announces its presence by the odors it breathes upon the 
air. The witness may have misconceived this ' look,' but from the 
calamities likely to follow such an act of treachery, if indeed it was 
then contemplated, it must be admitted as altogether probable that 
the shadow of such a crime struggling into being would have made 
itself manifest." (Page 283.) 

The attention of the President was not called by Mr. Holt to 
the insufficiency of the doom for the crime of which Porter had 
been convicted, or to its anomalous inclusion of civil disqualification 
which a military court could not inflict. 

The President, whose success in life was due to genius and hu- 
mor rather than learning, bowed to his i/fSi" dixit and affixed his 
signature. The country, agonizing under the apprehension of 
threatened dissolution, paid little heed to violations of law or indi- 
vidual suffering. 

Thwarted by the conspirators, deserted by time-servers, and de- 
nounced by many honest, thoughtless men, General Porter addressed 
himself, vigorously as he had confronted the public enemy, to the 
rescue of his name from the doom of perpetual infamy. He owed 
its deliverance to those who had borne it in honor to the grave, to 
her who had relinquished her own to accept it, to their children, 
not yet cognizant of its worth, and to those who must, without elec- 
tion, bear it through all time. 

The blood which dyed the heather of Scotland and the turf of 
Ireland for freedom of opinion, asserts itself, as occasion may re- 
quire, from generation to generation. 

Those who had procured his condemnation, were successful un- 
der three successive administrations, in frustrating all his efforts for 
a rehearing. On Februar)' 21st, 1870, Senator Chandler oftered a 
resolution, requesting the President to communicate to the Senate 
any recent correspondence in his possession in relation to the case 
of Fitz-John Porter," delivered a prepared speech " to vindicate 
the truth of history," and then withdrew the resolution. In that 
speech he asserted that Pope was put at the head of the army to 
rescue McClellan, by " fooling correspondents," " fooling the coun- 
try," "fooling the rebels," etc. Hon. Henry Wilson, chairman 



31 

of the Senate committee on military affairs, reiterated his opin- 
ion that Porter was entitled, in the light of after discovered evi- 
dence, to a rehearing. Mr. Chandler, forgetting the example of 
Britain's great orator who said, in 1848 when statesmanship was 
exerted to avert war : " The angel of death is passing over the 
land. I seem even now to hear the flapping of his wings," asked 
tauntingly, " ivhat business was it to him tvhcther he was cut to 
pieces or notV Few men entirely divest themselves of individual 
interest when that sort of carving becomes directly personal. 
Porter, even if ambitious of harikari, would have found Mr. Chand- 
ler's ethics a poor plea in mitigation, if he had suffered his corps 
to be "cut to pieces," leaving the army in a worse position than 
that in which it was placed by General Pope. He quoted as one 
of "the true facts of the case," an alleged assertion of General 
Lee's engineer in chief (not named), that Longstreet was not on 
the field until the morning of August 30th. It is now clearly in 
proof that Longstreet was there on the 29th with 25,000 men, 
(Anderson joining him with his division next day) before Porter 
arrived with 9,000 men. Porter's disposition of his inferior force 
on that day, when, according to the theory' of the prosecution, he 
was sulking like Achilles in his tent, is now conceded to have held 
Longstreet — not a man of sedentary habits — from putting Pope's 
army to rout. Mr. Chandler said in the speech: "There is one 
other point to which I wish to allude. During the very pendency of 
the trial, Fitz-John Porter said, in the presence o{ my informant, — 
who is a man most of you would believe, and who is to day in the 
emplo}'ment of Congress, and whose word I would take as soon as 
I would most men's, though I told him I would not use his name, 
but I will give sworn testimony taken down within two minutes 
after the utterance was made. — Fitz-John Porter said in his pres- 
ence, ' I was not true to Pope and there is no use in denying it.' " 
General Porter in a letter published in March, 1870, characterized 
this statement as "false in every particular," but the affidavit was 
not produced. 

" Our arm)- swore terribly in Flanders." Leasing making, once 
an indictable offence, had become the corner-stone of a creed, and 
its active practitioners the chosen recipients of congressional favor. 
During the French Revolution it ranked among the exact sciences. 
Its great apostle died half a centur>^ afterwards, a pensioner of the 



32 

Bourbons, wasting no avoidablernought upon the prudish comment 
of Macaulay : " A man who has never been in the tropics, does not 
know what a thunderstorm means ; a man who has never looked 
on Niagara, has but a faint idea of a cataract ; and he who has never 
read Barere's memoirs, may be said not to know what it is to He." 

Mr. Chandler is no longer here to make General Porter repara- 
tion for giving credence and currency to the profitable testimony 
of a nameless witness, who in the light of to-day could not com- 
mand belief in an asylum for the feeble-minded. 

All honor to President Hayes for responding to the instincts of 
fair play. Honor the more, because he served under General Pope, 
and retains confidence in him as a soldier and a man of veracity. 

General Pope had put himself on record over his own signature, 
in protest against a new trial, but nothing could induce him to re- 
affirm under peril of cross-examination, " compassed about with so 
great a cloud of witnesses," his theory of General Porter's treason. 
He had told his story often enough and with all the variations of 
which it was beneficially susceptible. General Porter, in selecting 
a Kentucky Bullitt as one of his counsel, had a keen eye for 
merit in the militia. General Pope knew that " every bullet has 
its billet," and, disliking the whole thing, re ct noinitie, kept clear 
of it. For the first time in their mischievous special partnership 
of sixteen years, his selfish instincts were more acute than those of 
General McDowell, whose argumentative " 7io?i mi ricordo" testi- 
mony before the Board yielded the reluctant admission that he 
had, within " fifteen minutes," discovered the truth as to an extract 
from General Jackson's report, repeatedly quoted by him, which 
the sentence immediately preceding would, if charitably given to 
the world, have shown to be inapplicable as used by McDowell to 
Porter's injury. Neither hiscunningness offence nor the technical 
objections skillfully interposed by the Recorder, availed to save 
him from that terrific impalement when he was driven back piece- 
meal upon truth. Mr. Choate may justify to his own conscience 
and the public mind, his metaphysical cruelty during that painful 
process, but if the Recorder had succeeded in adjourning the Board 
to New York, on pretence of relieving it from the prejudicial effect 
of partisanship alleged to exist at West Point, the best-informed 
community on military subjects in the United States, Mr. Bergh 
must have broken a lance in McDowell's behalf or abandoned the 



33 

lists as the champion of animalcular comfort. As Major Asa Bird 
Gardner came again and again to his rescue, General McDowell 
must have realized the comfort of momentary exemption from acute 
pain, and thought with the bard of Avon : " 'Tis sweet to list to 
the notes of a soft recorder." 

Stonewall Jackson repeatedly spoke with a soldier's keen ad- 
miration of Porter's masterly work on August 29th, as he did of 
that of Franklin, — no longer, unhappily for the country, wearing 
the uniform of the honorable profession he adorned — who, at 
Frazer's Farm, with a much* inferior force, by a skilful use of the 
shelter afforded by the natural face of the country, inflicted a rare 
defeat upon " the Right-arm of Lee." 

His habit was to finish fighting before reporting. He seems to 
have regarded Pope's Bull Run as a mere incident of the cam- 
paign. The caption is : " Report of operations from 15th August 
to September 5th, 1862." 

He introduces his account of the severe combat in which Porter 
with a small corps fought his army so desperately — volleys being 
delivered with but ten paces between the lines — as to bring Long- 
street to Jackson's aid, Jackson frankly saying that he would other- 
wise have called for re-inforcements, the very account persistently 
quoted by McDowell and Pooe as referring to other portions of 
Pope's army on the 29th, and as indubitable evidence of Porter's 
criminal inaction on that day, with these words : " On the following 
day, the 30th, my command occupied the high ground, and the di- 
visions the same relative positions to each other and the field, which 
they held the day .before, forming the left wing of the army. Gen- 
eral Longstreet's command formed the right wing, and a large 
quantity of artillery was posted upon a commanding eminence in 
the centre." Here follows the stereotyped extract of McDowell 
and Pope: "After some desultory skirmishing and heavy cannona- 
ding," &c. 

Suppressio vcri, suggestio falsi. Was this singular form of color 
blindness, which withdrew from the public view the declaratory 
clause of a straightforward narrative, and the sedulous promulga- 
tion for nearly seventeen years of the garbled quotation, an uncon- 
scious error heedlessly perpetuated, or the grafted fruit of native 
improbity carefully cultivated throughout that long period ? 

In either event, I submit the propriety of retiring Major-Gen- 



34 

eral McDowell as a witness on iiie sufficient ground of disability 
from wounds received in service. When so invalided, he can pon- 
der, at leisure, tUe question which perplexed another Major-General 
assigned to the command of a department where false-witness-bear- 
ing was the order of the day : " What is truth ? " 

The character of the officers composing the Advisory Board, 
assured General Porter a fair hearing. His unseen accusers had an 
equal advantage. They were no longer restricted to the residu- 
um of one army. Skinner and cowboy came up to the work in 
double files, led by the most mischievous guerilla of the Confeder- 
ate army, free of all restraint of principle or habit, neglecting civil 
duties abroad to discharge a Parthian arrow at a hated foe. 

The apocr}^pha of the prosecution had been vivified by the re- 
flective power of assertion. George Fourth's famous story that 
he led in person the charge that closed Napoleon's account at 
Waterloo, was not of a character to produce much impression upon 
his own mind when first put into circulation ; but he must have 
come to believe it in part, before he ventured to repeat it for the 
information of the truth-telling Duke of Wellington. General 
Pope, if he could have been brought before the Board, might, with 
growing confidence, have re-affirmed his florid report of the inter- 
sected Battle of Bull Run : " We fouglit a terrible battle here, 
yesterday, with the combined forces of the enemy, which lasted 
with continuous fury from daylight to dark." And the still more 
remarkable P. S. to his dispatch of Augest 30th, 9.45 P. M. : "We 
have lost nothing, neither guns nor wagons." In his absence the 
members of the Board had to content themselves with the evi- 
dence of his chief of staff, that when the reports were dictated by 
General Pope, he suggested such alterations as in the P. S. should 
approximate to the facts of the. case, he having seen some wagons 
and he thought some guns fall into the hands of the enemy. 
Colonel Ruggles was directed by General Pope to forward the re- 
port as dictated, in the purity of its virgin falsehood. 

Before both bodies Porter invoked the fullest investigation, in- 
viting and defying the most rigid scrutiny. It was at his formal 
request that the court-martial, after deliberation, decided to sit with 
open doors. 

General McDowell was useless at the second as at the first Bull 
Run ; his untiring efforts to reclaim the division of General King, 



35 

serving temporarily with Porter's corps, so exhausting his energies 
that his division commanders were left ver}^ much to themselves. 
He was quick to cover himself, as he had before been to " cover 
Washington." In his adroit use, on the 29th of August, of the 
626 Article of War, and, for 16 years thereafter, of Jackson's account 
of Porter's gallant fight on the 30th, to prove his criminal supine- 
ness on the 29th, this politic military absorbent appropriated the 
tactics of clievalicrs d' Industrie with "the little cup and balls" at 
the race-course, with marked success, till his meretricious arts ex- 
hausted human credulity. General McDowell's well-considered 
testimony before the court-martial was " the substance of things 
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders 
obtained a good report." Before the Board his genius failed him. 
The main force of his sworn argument lay in the recoil. That form 
of the disease known of old as "eternal hunger," aptly defined by 
General Scott as, "Pruriency of fame not earned," had become a 
camp epidemic. Many "walked the hospitals" successfully, and 
Generals McDowell and Pope were among its legacies to the 
country. 

The morning of Pope's military life had been spent in adver- 
tising his own works, including the telescopic artesian wells of 
New Mexico, at the bottom of which Major Linnard sought in 
vain for truth. When female vanity, stimulated to the top of its 
bent, responded to the attraction of chemical affinity, the captain 
of engineers became, at a bound, brigadier general in the line of 
the regular army, and played the most audacious game of brag 
ever witnessed. Truth has been throughout life his Alexander the 
Coppersmith. They shrank from each other with sensitive avoid- 
ance, prompted by mutual dislike and the consciousness of a 
common capacity for mutual mischief. General McDowell, on the 
other hand, hoarded it with a miser's greed, — sometimes keeping 
it altogether out of sight, as he did his heavy reserves at Bull Run. 
A very moderate expenditure of truth in reporting the causes of 
his defeat there, would have rendered unnecessary the construction 
of that vast pyramid of subterfuges — the whited sepulchre which 
bids fair to become his monument. General Pope encountered an 
almost insuperable difficulty, in pervasive disbelief of his own 
planting. General McDowell suffers from the reaction ccwisequent 



36 

On over-belief, — a too ready faith in his grandiloquent assumptions. 
He has advertised the world that 

" Mere prattle without practice, 
Is all his soldiership " 

Aware of the difficulties which prevented the court martial from 
giving General Porter a fair trial, in the vitiated atmosphere of 
Washington, while the minds of honest men had been studiously 
embittered against him, and technical objections, skilfully inter- 
posed by an artful advocate, shut out vital truths, and properly 
on their guard against undue influence, from the reaction sure to 
follow cruel injustice, the members of the board say : 

" We have made a thorough examination of all the evidence 
presented and bearing in any manner upon the merits of the case. 
The Recorder has, under instructions from the Board, sought with 
great diligence for evidence in addition to that presented by the 
petitioner, especially such as might appear to have a bearing ad- 
verse to the claims urged by him." 

Their graphic account of the action of the Fifth Corps against 
overpowering odds, on the 30th of August, was an act of justice 
due to the dead Reynolds, the dying Sykes, the living Warren, and 
the brave men who followed them steadily to defeat or victory ; 
and it will disabuse candid minds of any lingering belief that 
soldiers of that school would have countenanced the shameful 
avoidance of duty charged against the accomplished commander 
who controlled that action, if he had been weak and wicked enough 
to invite their guilty cooperation. 

•' As Longstreet's army pressed forward to strike Pope's ex- 
posed left wing and flank, Warren, with his little brigade, sprung 
into the Gap and breasted the storm until but a handful of his brave 
men were left alive. Then Sykes, with his disciplined brigades, 
and Reynolds, with his gallant Pennsylvania Reserves, seized the 
commanding ground in rear, and, like a rock, withstood the advance 
of the victorious enemy, and saved the Union Army from rout." 

Thus did this gallant corps nobly and amply vindicate the char- 
acter of their trusted chief, and demonstrate to all the world that 
" disobedience of orders " and " misbehavior in the presence of the 
enemy " are crimes which could not possibly find place in the head or 
heart of him who thus commanded the corps. 

Compare Porter's terse, vigorous English, on August 29th, the 
day of his alleged treachery and Pope's suppositious victory, with 



Z7 

McDowell's mellifluous iteration of apochryphal services, or Pope's 

turgid proclamations of abortive enterprise. 

" General Morell. 

Tell me what is passing quickly. If the enemy is coming, hold to him, and I 
will come up. Post your men to repulse him. 

F.J. Porter, Major-General." 

And again, in reply to advice from Morell that they had better 
retire, &c.: " We cannot retire while McDowell holds on." 

Treachery — all falsehood — is verbose and pretentious. Porter 
used the short, honest words of love and anger, which go to the 
heart and live in the memory. 

The report of the Board is so clear in statement, and so logical 
in conclusions, as to preclude objection and constrain dispassionate 
minds to choose between the honest fulfilment of an obligation 
equally binding upon the nation with the payment of the war debt, 
make full and complete the tardy reparation still possible, for a 
too grievous wrong to a faithful public servant or wilful adherence to 
an erroneous opinion, long honestly entertained on defensible 
grounds, nov/ proven by conclusive evidence to be without founda- 
tion in truth. 

"These charges and specifications certainly bear no discernible resemblance to the 
facts of the case as now established. Yet it has been our duty to carefully compare 
with these facts the views entertained by the Court-Martial, as shown in the findings 
and in the review of the case which was prepared for the information of the President 
by the Judge Advocate General who had conducted the prosecution, and thus to clearly 
perceive every enor into which the Court-Martial was led. We trust it is not neces- 
sary for us to submit in detail the results of this comparison, and that it will be suffici- 
ent for us to point out the fundamental errors, and to say that all the essential facts in 
every instance stand out in clear and absolute contrast to those supposed facts upon 
which General Porter was adjudged guilty. 

The fundamental errors upon which the conviction of General Porter depended may 
be summed up in a few words. It was maintained, and apparently established to the 
satisfaction of the Court-Martial, that only about one-half of the Confederate Army was 
on the field of Manassas on the 29th of August, while General Lee with the other half 
was still beyond the Bull Run Mountains ; that General Pope's army, exclusive of Por- 
ter's corps, was engaged in a severe and nearly equal contest with the enemy, and only 
needed the aid of a flanlv attacli which Porter was expected to mal^e to insure the de- 
feat and destruction or capture of the Confederate force in their front under General 
Jackson; that McDowell and Porter, with their joint forces. Porter's leading, had ad- 
vanced toward Gainesville until the head of their column had reached a point near the 
Warrenton turnpike, where they found a division of Confederate troops, " seventeen 
regiments," which Buford had counted as they passed through Gainesville, marching 
along the road across Porter's front, and going toward the field of battle at Groveton ; 
that McDowell ordered Porter to at once attack that column thus moving to join Jacli- 
son, or the flank and rear of the line if they had formed in line, while he would take 
his own troops Ijy the Sudley Springs road and throw them into the enemy's centre 
near Groveton ; that Porter, McDowell having then separated from him, disobeyed 
that order to attack, allowed that division of the enemy's troops to pass him unmolested, 
and then fell back and retreated toward Manassas Junction ; that Porter then remained 
in the rear all the afternoon, listening to the sounds of battle and coolly contemplating 



a presumed defeat of his comrades on the centre and right of the field ; that this divi- 
sion of the enemy having passed Porter's column and formed on the right of Jackson's 
line near Grovelon, an order was sent to Porter to attack the right flanlc or rear of the 
enemy's line, upon which his own line of march must bring him, but that he had wil- 
fully disobeyed, and made no attempt to execute that order ; tliat in this way was lost 
the opportunity to destroy Jackson's detached force before t'ne other wing of General 
Lee's Army could join it, and that this junction having been effected during the night 
of the 29th, the defeat of General Pope's army on the 30th thus resulted from General 
Porter's neglect and disobedience. 

Now, in contrast to these fundamental errors, the following all-important facts are 
fully established : 

As Porter was advancing toward Gainesville, and while yet nearly four miles from 
that place and more than two miles from the nearest point of the Warrenton Turnpike, 
he met the right wing of the Confederate Army, twenty-five thousand strong, which 
had arrived on the field that morning and was already m line of battle. Not being 
at that moment quite fully informed of the enemy's movements, and being then under 
orders from Pope to push rapidly toward Gainesville, Porter was pressing forward 
to attack the enemy in his front, when McDowell arrived on the field with later infor- 
mation of the enemy and later and very different orders from Pope, assumed the com- 
mand and arrested Porter's advance. This later information left no room for doubt 
that the main body of Lee's Army was already on the field and far in advance of 
Pope's Army in preparation for battle. General McDowell promptly decided not to at- 
tempt to go further to the front, but to deploy his column so as to form line in connec- 
tion with General Pope's right wing, which was then engaged with Jackson. To 
do this General McDowell separated his corps entirely from General Porter's, and 
thus relinquished the command and all right to the command of Porter's corps. Mc- 
Dowell did not give Porter any order to attack, nor did he give him any order what- 
ever to govern his action after their separation. 

It does not appear from the testimony that he conveyed to General Porter in any 
way the erroneous view of the military situation which was afterward maintained 
before the Court-Martial, nor that he suggested to General Porter any expectation that 
he would make an attack. On the contrary, the testimony of all the witnesses as to 
what was actually said and done, the information which McDowell and Porter then 
had respecting the enemy, and the movement which McDowell decided to make, and 
did make, with his own troops, prove conclusively that there was left no room for 
doubt in Porter's mind that his duty was to stand on the defensive and hold his position 
until McDowell's movement could be completed. It would have indicated a great error 
of military judgment to have done or ordered the contrary, in the situation as then 
fully known to both McDowell and Porter. 

General Pope appears from his orders and from his testimony to have been at that 
time wholly ignorant of the true situation. He had disapproved of the sending of 
Ricketts to Thoroughfare Gap to meet Longstreet on the aSth, believing that the main 
body of Lee's Army could not reach the field of Manassas before the night of the 30th. 
Hence, he sent the order to Porter dated 4:30 p. M. to attack Jackson's right flanli or 
rear. Fortunately, that order did not reach Porter until about sunset — too late for any 
attack to be made. Any attack which Porter could have made at any time that after- 
noon must necessarily have been fruitless of any good result. Porter's faithful, subordi- 
nate and intelligent conduct that afternoon saved the Union Army from the defeat 
which would otherwise have resulted that day from the enemy's more speedy concen- 
tration. The only seriously critical period of that campaign, viz. , between 1 1 A. M. and 
sunset of August 29, was thus safely passed. Porter had understood and appreciated 
the military situation, and, so far as he had acted upon his own judgment, his action 
had been wise and judicious. For the disaster of the succeeding day he was in no 
degree responsible. Whoever else may have been responsible, it did not flow from any 
action or inaction of his. 

The judgment of the Court-Martial upon General Porter's conduct was evidently 
based upon greatly erroneous impressions, not only respecting what that conduct really 
was and the orders under which he was acting, but also respecting all the circum- 
stances under which he acted. Especially was this true in respect to the character of 
the battle of the 29th of August. That battle consisted of a number of sharp and gal- 



39 

latit combats between small portions of tbe opposing forces. Those combats were of 
short duration and were separated by long intervals of simple skirmishing and Artillery 
duels. Until after six o'clock only a small part of the troops on either side were en- 
gaged at any time during the afternoon. Then, about sunset, one additional division 
on each side was engaged near Groveton. The musketry of that last contest and the 
yells of the Confederate troops about dark were distinctly heard by the officers of Por- 
ter's corps; but at no other time during all that afternoon was the volume of musketry 
such that it could be heard at the position of Porter's troops. No sound but that of 
Artillery was heard by them during all those hours when Porter was understood by 
the Court-Martial to have been listening to the sounds of a furious battle raging im- 
mediately to the right ; and those sounds of Artillery were by no means such as to in- 
dicate a general battle. 

The reports of the 29th and those of the 30th of August, have somehow been 
strangely confounded with each other. Even the Confederate reports have, since the 
termination of the war, been similarly misconstrued. Those of the 30th have been 
misquoted as referring to the 29th, thus to prove that a furious battle was going on 
while Porter was comparatively inactive on the 29th. The fierce and gallant struggle 
of his own troops on the 30tlr, has thus been used to sustain the original error under 
which he was condemned. General Porter was, in effect, condemned for not having 
taken any part in his own battle. Such was the error upon which General Porter was 
pronounced guilty of the most shameful crime known among soldiers. We believe not 
one among all the gallant soldiers on that bloody field was less deserving of such 
condemnation than he. 

The evidence of bad animus in Porter's case ceases to be material in view of the 
evidence of his soldierly and faithful conduct. But it is our duty to say that the indis- 
creet and unkind terms in which General Porter expressed his distrust of the capacity 
of his superior commander cannot be defended; and to that indiscretion was due, in 
very great measure, the misinterpretation of both his motives and his conduct and his 
consequent condemnation. 

Having tlius given the reasons for our conclusions, we have the honor to report in 
accordance with the President's order, that, in our opinion, justice requires at his hands 
such action as may be necessary to annul and- set aside the findings and sentence of 
the Court-Martial in the case of Major General Fitz-John Porter, and to restore him to 
the positions of which that sentence deprived him — sucli restoration to take effect from 
the date of his dismissal from the service. 

General Porter was, in reality, punished for fighting too long on 
August 30th. He might have fared better if he had changed 
front to the rear when others did. Reputations were, during the 
civil war, not unfrequently distributed like hats after more agreea- 
ble pastime, those who retire early, if otherwise thoughtful, getting 
the best. The MacSycophant family attained high rank in the army 
without wasting much time in the field. The silky-eared animals 
who assume the lion's skin, are invaluable as fathers of the most 
useful beasts of burden serving humanity, but we need lions to lead 
where it is necessary to drive them. 

The Board properly rebuked General Porter's transgression of 
military propriety in certain telegrams sent General Burnside, prior 
to the second battle of Bull Run, where his high courage and skilful 
dispositions averted something worse if possible than General Mc- 
Dowell's experimental survey of that field. In that regard. General 
Porter's conduct was impolitic, unsoldierlike, and unjustifiable, 



40 

though exceedingly human. C2l|^ain Pope was known to both 
armies ; his appointment to supreme command was received with 
as much exultation in the rebel, as humiliation in the union, camps, 
and similiar opinions were freely expressed in both. The disgust 
General Porter shared with his comrades, could not fail to be in- 
creased by the demoralization of the fine corps he had brought to 
a high state of discipline. His curt, unimprovable phrases were 
all the more objectionable, because of their obvious accuracy. With- 
out those unhappy telegrams, for which General Porter sought no 
concealment, — and it would have been well for the army and the 
country, if the tact which suppressed a similar impropriety on the 
part of another distinguished officer had let them sleep at the War 
Department — the public mind, though thrown off its balance by 
the sudden succession of small performance to large promise, and 
the public conscience, though stupified by daily opiates of growing 
falsehood, would have repudiated the monstrous verdict. His own 
sense of propriety, quickened, it may be, by the fearful punishment 
they brought upon him, must have caused General Porter to re- 
gret his unbecoming references to his inferior superior, as sincerely 
as General Pope does any unprofitable truth, into the utterance of 
which he may have been inadvertently betrayed. 

Few Union Generals were entirely free from temptation to resent 
injury of that character ; fewer still met it by turning the other cheek. 
The present General of the Army, and the great captain who closed 
the war, had their full share of such embarrassments, and both 
used marked emphasis in manifesting their sense of wrong. At 
the farewell review of his army, about to return to the body of the 
people. General Sherman publicly repelled the injustice done that 
army and himself, by refusing the proffered hand of his technical 
superior in the presence of the President, and the country sustained 
his prompt and proper action. The latent manhood of General 
Grant's character was never so finely brought out, as when he com- 
pelled his civil superiors to forego a cherished scheme for bringing 
General Lee to trial, after accepting his parole, " that treason 
might be made odious." In protecting his personal honor, he 
probably saved the honor of the nation from the stain of murder 
under safe conduct. 

In all this, the Civil War differed little from other wars. Gen- 
eral Jackson — ordered to disband his Tennessee volunteers at 



41 

Natchez, in order that they might be constrained, on finding them- 
selves without money and separated from their State by hundreds 
of miles of unbroken wilderness, to re-enter the service as enlisted 
men — defied the administration, on the ground that he was bound 
to return the survivors to the mothers and wives who had entrusted 
them to him, and, procuring transportation at his own cost, 
cut the road through the Indian country which still bears his name, 
and mustered them out where he had mustered them in, within 
reach of their homes. Urged by the surgeon in charge to leave 
to die at Natchez one man whose case was considered hopeless, 
he refused to " abandon anything that had life in it." Near the 
end of the first day's march, the sick man, partially roused from 
what his comrades regarded as the stupor of approaching death, 
by the metallic tones of his leader's voice as he tramped through 
the mud beside the wagon, having surrendered his horse to another 
invalid, asked that his head might be raised so that he should see 
him once more. His heart warmed into fresh life at the sight of 
that " good grey head," glorified by the faithful discharge of daily 
duty. " Where are we, General ?" " Safe on the way home, my 
dear fellow." The pristine vigor of Jackson's blood was transfused 
into his languid veins, and he lived to follow him gladly through 
all subsequent campaigns, worshiping him as his earthly saviour 
while renovated life endured. 

The condemnation of General Porter on the circumstantial evi- 
dence furnished by his telegrams to General Burnside carries with 
it the ostracism of another faithful Union soldier. The endorser is 
equally responsible with the drawer. On the telegrams Burnside 
must stand or fall with Porter. 

General Burnside, whose patriotism has never been impugned 
and who is honored by a seat in the Senate from a State whose 
sons have never wavered m loyalty to the Union, sent copies of 
each of the obnoxious telegrams to Generals Halleck and McClel- 
lan. He testified (P. 175) that he also sent them to the President, 
adding : " I did not feel myself authorized to withhold anything 
from him that would tend to give him a correct impression of what 
was doing on that line." General Burnside evidently thought that 
the paper for which he thus made himself responsible as moral en- 
dorser would produce " a correct impression " on the President's 
mind. In reply to the question, immediately following his history 



42 

of the telegrams in question, "From your observation of General 
Porter's military conduct, and from your knowledge of him as an 
officer, what opinion have you formed of him, touching his fidelity 
and attention to his duty, and his zeal in its performance?" Gen- 
eral Burnside said : " I have never seen anything to lead me to 
think that he^was anything but a zealous, faithful, and loyal officer." 

In another case, the end was accomplished. A woman was 
hanged at the Federal city, under the sentence of a military com- 
mission convened to defy the law within the shadow of the Supreme 
Court of the United States. The case of Mrs. Surratt was one for 
the civil courts ; but the conspirators knew that no American jury 
would find her guilty on such evidence, even if Jeffries or Norbury 
were permitted to return to earth to lay down the law. The sin 
for which her remnant of life was taken, was the retention of the 
maternal instinct after she had ceased to discharge maternal func- 
tions. She had not refused shelter to her son because of her 
knowledge after the fact — inferred rather than proven — that he had 
participated in a plot to carry off President Lincoln, and deliver 
him to the confederate authorities as a hostage for peace, — a plot 
afterwards abandoned by Booth for assassination. She had not 
propitiated stultified officials by voluntarily surrendering him. She 
would have been false to everything which exalts womanhood if 
she had done either. 

Then, too, an honest man occupied the Presidential chair ; and 
the only friend she had — her worthless son being in hiding, occu- 
pied only with thought for his own safety — her daughter, sought 
pardon or reprieve. Access to Mr. Johnson was denied. Volun- 
teer sentries, never seen in the discharge of military duty elsewhere, 
stood guard outside his door, repelling the fainting woman, until 
her mother was launched into eternity. Their self-imposed task 
accomplished, remorse claimed its prey,and they successively sought 
forgetfulness in self-murder. Their sin found them out unerringly 
in distant Kansas, as in the crowded harbor of New York. 

Meanwhile, flushed by their triumph over a friendless woman, 
they laid Jefferson Davis in hold, and kept him long enough to in- 
vest the most unpopular man in the States lately in revolt, with the 
halo of martyrdom, and endow him with the sympathies of a gal- 
lant people, apparently doomed to see one an unwilling sufferer 
for the sins of all. The people of the North who had furnished the 



43 

blood and treasure which bought success, counted all as nothing 
for the love they bore the Union. Fratricide had done its worst. 
No smoke of human sacrifice should be permitted to sully the flag 
of their idolatry while it waved over unresisting foes. Nearer in 
wisdom to the corner-stone rejected by the builders than their 
vainglorious leaders, they sought to purge the Temple of Liberty 
of those who had well-nigh made it a den of thieves. The right- 
eous anger which drove the money-changers from the Courts of 
the Lord, used no unnecessary violence. The tables were over- 
thrown, the base coin scattered on the polluted floor, but Hebrew 
ringsters found time, in the midst of fluttering doves and lowing 
oxen, with divine vengeance hovering over them, to pick up many 
little things for a rainy day. 

The manners of the world are improving. Its morals are not 
deteriorating. The gray head of Mrs. Surratt found rest with her 
body in the grave, because modern decency forbade a Temple Bar 
whereon to impale it. Drawing and quartering had had their day. 
The men of '76 would doubtless have hanged Arnold, if the Vul- 
ture's beak had not intervened ; but they would have buried with 
the honors of war the leg which bore, as its sufficient phylactery, 
the scars of Quebec. The men of '65, in giving Jefferson Davis his 
life, forfeited by causeless rebellion doggedly prolonged for eight 
months after General Lee notified him that further resistance was 
hopeless, would not have paltered with him about recognizing the 
honorable wounds of Buena Vista. 

General Porter's immolation for what Mr. Holt with uninten- 
tional accuracy called " the shadow of a crime," was a misfortune of 
the time, the work, not of a party, but of an army clique, to which 
a few party barnacles had attached themselves. No political party 
being responsible for the wrong, no partisan interest can be sub- 
served by its perpetuation, and no sagacious party leader will ap- 
peal to party spirit or invoke the powerful aid of party discipline 
to that end. In the absence of the higher motive of loyalty to 
country, shrewd loyalty to party will preclude such indiscretion. 
The American people is too proud of its past, too jealous of its 
future renown, to permit the army to be made a foot-ball in petty 
struggles for party ascendancy. Every effort heretofore made in 
that direction has recoiled upon the party making it. 

PoHticians recognize the fact that when our people undertake 



44 

to remedy the wrongs of a man wiio has served them well in the 
field, they make themselves felt. Acres of politicians, of large ag- 
gregate market value before the flood, were submerged in the strug- 
gle which elevated Jackson to the Presidency, and never heard 
of afterwards. The sum in which Judge Hall amerced Gen- 
eral Jackson for an infraction of civil law — a necessary incident of 
his successful defence of New Orleans — was repaid near the end of 
his life. He had refused the money and protected the self-sufficient 
functionary from chastisement at the hands of the grateful people 
whose homes he saved from pollution. There are very few Con- 
gressional districts without active, energetic men who served with 
Porter and have brought their neighbors acquainted with his mer- 
its and the demerits of his persecutors. The people of the North 
know that President Lincoln gave him the highest brevet before 
the receipt of General McClellan's report recommending him for that 
honor and regretting that the limit of brevet rank had in his case 
been reached. The people of the South know that Robert E. Lee, 
whose captivating personal qualities eclipsed his soldiership, " the 
selfless man and stainless gentleman," who never sought nor needed 
a scapegoat, made no secret of the fact that the manner in which 
Porter handled his corps at Antietam (his enemies having withheld 
the charges against him that he might do work there for which 
they had no taste,) was the great cause of his own defeat where he 
had anticipated a signal victory. 

To perpetuate Porter's punishment the American people must, 
in the face of the civilized world, stultify the public mind and out- 
rage the public conscience, by deliberately rejecting the concurrent 
testimony of many of the best men who served in either army, that 
they may accept that of the worst men of both armies. Confeder- 
ate testimony in his behalf must be met by disproof, not by a vapid 
sneer. Justice was done by Britons, on the unsupported statement 
of Napoleon, to Sir Robert Calder, after he had been under ban 
nearly as long as Porter. 

Professional politicians of the baser sort, may obey the behests 
of a caucus, but men competent to control and preserve a great 
party, will be aroused to thoughtful action by the alarming advance 
of the destructive communistic spirit, appeased for a time by such 
tubs to the whale as the sacrifice of General Porter, but again 
rampant on the sand-lots of San Francisco. 



45 

The long delay, unjust and oppressive as it has been to General 
Porter, brings compensation in its train. The Philip of 1880 is not 
the Philip of 1 863. He is quite sober and a little sick. Guided by 
returning reason, civil law slowly resumes its sway. No one of the 
fair sisterhood of States now presents the sad spectacle of the ad- 
justment of all rights of person and property by the fluctuating 
spirit-level of a mere dragoon. The maintenance of the Monroe 
Doctrine — a British invention to thwart the Holy Alliance, impro- 
vised by Mr. Canning, who, finding that Mr. Rush had no instruc- 
tions, first used the French to that end — again enforced upon the 
country with the ebullient fervor of the spasmodic patriotism which 
precedes a Presidential election, may bring war at short notice. Our 
army is a skeleton, our navy, save in personnel, a delusion. The 
men who stood steadfastly by the Union through four years of try- 
ing vicissitude, with the unflagging energy of a father's faith and 
the patient persistence of a mother's love, are ready on just oc- 
casion, with most of those who opposed them so sternly in fratri- 
cidal strife, to take arms again, but they would like to know some- 
thing of the men who are to lead them. An officer's achievements 
are no longer measured by the number of men he succeeded in 
having killed. When the reduced circle gathers at nightfall 
around the hearth, the outgoing generation think of the missing 
sons, 

" Wasted in strife e'er the battle was won." 

No echo from human lips, or awakened conscience, may ever 
have reached either of the misplaced Federal commanders at Bull 
Run, of the agonizing cry of Augustus : " Varus, Varus, what hast 
thou done with my legions ? " but its dull, intrusive monotone thrills 
sad hearts with renewed anguish in the watches of the night when 

" Plaintive memory takes the place of the Hope." 

No Other country could have furnished such food for powder. 
It is too valuable for other purposes to be squandered in qualify- 
ing raw men for the modicum of military service needed to fit them 
out as candidates for civil office, or in making capable staff officers 
acquainted with the practical duties of the line, that they may there- 
after neglect both. The best feature of General Scott's military 
character was his skilful economy of men, and similar good hus- 
bandry was a marked characteristic of a greater soldier. Prodigal 
of his own blood, and, when occasion required, of that of others, 



46 

the history of Jackson's continuously successful campaigns bears 
no record of the waste of human life. With the tiger's leap at the 
critical moment, he combined the previous caution of the cat. 
Sent to New Orleans to make bricks without straw, he was told 
that men and arms would follow. Muskets failed to reach him 
in season, because niggard economy, little short of tacit treason, 
specifically permitted the boatmen to stop by the way to trade. 
General Carroll seized one boat load of arms and munitions and 
carried them with him. General Coffee, upon whom that great 
arm never leaned in vain, on receipt of the characteristic order of 
his chief: " You must not sleep till you are within striking distance," 
marched his brigade eighty miles in twenty-four hours, surpass- 
ing the famous march of Crawford's superb brigade which enabled 
him to turn the tide in Wellington's favor. With these travel-worn 
troops, Old Hickory, on the day after their arrival, struck the de- 
cisive blow which made the better known victory of January 8th 
possible. He had to beat the enemy and red tape with one hand, 
" The crowning mercy " of the war, providentially vouchsafed after 
peace had been concluded, by which, in Mr, Jefferson's happy 
phrase, he " filled the measure of his country's glory," throwing 
the mantle of oblivion over the disasters of the Northern frontier, 
and the veil of obscurity over the McDowells and Popes by whom 
they had been brought about, was won with one-third of his effec- 
tive force standing idle, nominally in support, but in reality await- 
ing weapons to be wrenched from the enemy, or taken from the re- 
laxing grasp of dying comrades. When his work was done, he had 
six killed and seven wounded, while nearly 2,000 brave veterans, 
case-hardened under Moore and Wellington, strewed the Plain of 
Chalmette, with most of the gallant leaders who brought them for- 
ward again and again to those furious " onsets of despair." His 
raw militia had no ramparts but what they threw up from the 
alluvial soil. Popular enthusiasm, always ready to invest genius 
with material power easy of comprehension, planted cotton bales in 
his front. In point of fact. Commodore Patterson, finding twenty- 
seven bales on the bank of the river, had them thrown in by the 
crew of the Caroline, on the extreme right of Jackson's hnes, where 
the fighting was least sangunary. 

The report of the Senate committee on military affairs, enforcing 
the recommendation of the Advisory Board, carries weight because 



47 

it is the result of careful investigation, and embodies the deliberate 
judgment of members who command public respect and confidence. 
The report was in effect unanimous, the feeble dissent of the lesser 
Senator from Illinois, being one of those slight exceptions which 
go to confirm the rule. 

When his pendulous patriotism finally planted him, after many 
acrobatic evolutions, at the proper time on the strong side, Mr. Lo- 
gan saw that he would be " nothing if not critical." His instincts 
control his action. Debarred by congenital obliquity and the bent 
of his self-education from all comprehension of the conduct or char- 
acter of General Porter, he bristles instinctively at the mention of 
his name. He is not more astray now than he was in the case of 
George H. Thomas. 

General Thomas, who never could be made to fight till he was 
ready, was accused by ferocious non-combatants, at a critical period 
of the war, of " unnecessary slowness," and most of the sins of omis- 
sion imputed under like circumstances to General Porter, and his 
removal demanded. Mr. Logan, appointed Major-General because 
of his great labor in reaching the Federal camp by a circuitous 
route, was more efficient at Washington than in the field, and con- 
vinced the administration that he was the Admirable Crichton 
wherewith to supersede the slow General. Armed with the order 
which was to open the way to glory, he met in central Kentucky 
tidings of the battle of Nashville, which sent him to the rear, a sad- 
der and, for a while, a wiser man. 

The ephemera of the Civil War combine against General Porter 
because of the instinctive repulsion between their tribe and all 
trained soldiers. The honest admiration of the American people 
for heroism, real or imaginary, has given the least worthy of the 
clan great power for mischief. The Wizard of the North gave 
Dugald Dalgetty " Loyalty's Reward," with knighthood at the 
hand of the Great Marquis " on a stricken field," whereby he was 
enabled to claim precedence, upon occasions of ceremony, over 
better men ; but the idea of bringing such a soldier into Parliament 
does not seem to have occured to his versatile genius. 

The newspapers tell us of a fossiliferous Congress, in secret 
session at the capital, made up in good part of those veterans of 
the staff corps who never seek retirement, however worthy of it, 
whose faultless uniforms and standard regulation grief give such 



48 / 

cheerful animation to the solemnity of a Washinj^ton funeral, one 
of whom takes pleasure in furnishing, for false and fraudulent uses, 
" printed extracts from the Rebel commanders' reports of engage- 
ments, certified to by the Adjutant-General," with the comforting 
assurance that the writer has " reason to believe that there will be 
no favorable action on F. J. P.'s application for a remission of any 
part of the sentence of the Court in the case," — an application, 
by the way, never made — under the president of the first court, 
always potential on the back-stairs, and inspired by the late Judge- 
Advocate General, still anxious to shield the country from the 
dire effects of Porter's long-lived treachery. 

These people may yet secure for General Porter the reward 
which is his due — a major generalship in the line, by special en- 
actment, for saving the army from annihilation at the second bat- 
tle of Bull Run, and the capital from falling into the hands of the 
enemy, or, in default of justice at the hands of Congress, his eleva- 
tion to such high civil station as should command their lively ad- 
oration. 

Meanwhile let the dear-bought generalships, with all their em- 
oluments and such honors as may remain with them, be held till 
death shall do its kindly office, and let the gallows of Haman 
stand, unoccupied, a guide-post for all time. Mordecai's occasions 
do not call him to the king,'s gate. 

Carpet knighthood shows to more advantage on the Pacific 
slope than in the high places of the field. Vice in exaltation chal- 
lenges the attention of those whose instincts would lead them to 
pass by on the other side to escape contact with vice in humilia- 
tion. 

For General Porter's persecutors, one and all, I bespeak in ad- 
vance, the charities of the grave', with immunity from all earthly 
punishment at the hands of others. Where charity fails let con- 
tempt do its appropriate work. 

" The earth has bubbles as the water hath. 
And these are of them." 

The country is on trial now. Congress has the present power 
to determine for it whether it shall be true to itself, as Porter was 
true to it in its dark hour of calamity. 

Woe to the " congregation of evil-doers," seeking darkness 
rather than light, if, in the blind energy of infatuation, they shall 



49 

succeed in carrying the case to the court of last resort — the High 
Court of Errors and Appeals, — the sovereign power of the people 
in corrective exercise at the polls. When overtaken by the 
ground-swell of popular wrath, they may call in vain for rocks 
and hills to cover them. 

General Porter's trial is over, his punishment ended. After an- 
ticipating for seventeen years of his natural life, drawn out " twixt 
upper, nether, and surrounding fires," the pains and penalties of 
purgatory, he stands before his country and the world, " redeemed, 
regenerated, and disenthralled," without the smell of fire upon his 
garments. 

" Whatever record leap to light 
He never shall be shamed." 

W. C. Patterson. 



Errata — After the word columns on page 279, line t8, read — "asked permission 
to go to the aid of Sykes,' and the fragmentary volunteer forces still stubbornly holcling 
their ground, earnestly affirming his confidence in a successful result." 

•Page ziSl-, on line 13 from bottom of page, read Ale Dome I I iox "McDonald," 



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